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THE WAY TO GOD 



AND HOW TO FIND ITi 



BY 

D. L. MOODY. 



CHICAGO: 

The Bible Institute Colportage Association, 

250 La Salle Avenue. 



^ 31 



..n 



J 4- 






Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1884, 

By F. H. KTEVELL, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress it Washington, 



ly Tmnafcr 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. "Love that passeth Knowledge" «. 7 

Chapter II. The Gateway into the Kingdom . 22 

Chapter HI. The Two Classes . . 41 

Chapter IV. Words op Counsel ... 58 

Chapter V. A Divine Saviour ... 63 

Chapter VI. Repentance and Restitution . . 71 

Chapter VII. Assurance of Salvation . . 84 

Chapter VIII. Christ All and in All . 101 

Chapter IX. Backsliding . , 114 



WANTED! 

We want earnest men and women as "BOOK MIS- 
SIONARIES" in every city, town and village, to represent 
our work, which is inter-denominational in its character 
and invites the sympathy and co-operation of all Christian 
people. 

The purpose of THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORT- 
AQE ASSOCIATION (D. L. Moody, Founder) may be 
indicated by the following definite aims: 

First. To produce good literature at a price within 
reach of all. 

Second. To carry the Gospel, by means of the printed 
page, where church privileges are wanting or not embraced. 

Third. To supply suitable religious reading for dis- 
tribution among all classes, young and old. 

Fourth. To provide a profitable means of employment. 

Liberal terms are made to colporters and canvassers. 
Previous experience not essential. Full printed instructions 
and suggestions provided. All of one's time need not be 
given, but the more the better; and such time as is thus 
spent should be definite. 

This book is a sample of the HOODY COLPORTAQE 
LIBRARY, which contains nearly one hundred titles, some 
in the German, Swedish and Danish-Norwegian languages. 

If you are interested in knowing more about our work, 
address (enclosing stamp for reply), 

A. P. FITT, Superintendent, 

350 L,a Salle Ave., Chicago; or, 

East NorthfielcS, Mass. 
A good book — 
" Will go anywhere, sea or land; 
Gets into cabin or palace; 
Reaches those otherwise unreachable; 
Waits its time to be heard; 
Is never tired of speaking. 

Travels further and cheaper than any other; 
Is unaffected by climate, untouched by fever. 

Once started off, calls for no salary. 
Costs nothing to feed or clothe. 

Never changes its voice, and lasts 
Forever — until the fire comes." 



TO THE READER 



In this small volume I have endeavored to point 
out the Way to God. 

I have embodied in the little book a considerable 
part of several addresses which have been delivered in 
different cities, both of Great Britain and my own 
country. God has graciously owned them when 
spoken from the pulpit, and I trust will none the 
less add his blessing now they have been put into 
the printed page with additional matter. 

I have called attention first to the Love of God, the 
source of all Gifts of Grace; have then endeavored to 
present truths to meet the special needs of representa- 
tive classes, answering the question, "How man can 
be just with God," hoping thereby to lead souls to Him 
who is "the Way, the Truth and the Life." 



The last chapter is specially addressed to Back- 
sliders — a class, alas, far too numerous amongst us. 

With the earnest prayer and hope that by the 
blessing of God on these pages the reader may be 
strengthened, established and settled in the faith of 
( hrist, 

I am, yours in His service, 



THE WAY TO GOD. 



CHAPTER I. 
"LOVE THATPASSETH KNOWLEDGE." 

"To know tine love of Christ which passeth knowledge." 
(Ephbbianb hi. 19.) 

If I could only make men understand the real meaning 
of the words of the apostle John — " God is love," I would 
take that single text, and would go up and down the world 
proclaiming this glorious truth. If you can convince a man 
that you love him you have won his heart. If we really make 
people believe that God loves them, how we should find them 
crowding into the kingdom of heaven ! The trouble is that 
men think God hates them ; and so they are all the time run- 
ning away from Him. 

We built a church in Chicago some years ago- and 
were very anxious to teach the people the love of God. We 
thought if we could not preach it into their hearts we would 
try and burn it in ; so we put right over the pulpit in gas-jets 
these words — God is Love. A man going along the streets 
one night glanced through the door, and saw the text. He 
was a poor prodigal. As he passed on he thought to himself, 
" * God is Love !' No ! He does not love me ; for I am a poor 
miserable sinner." He tried to get rid of the text; but it 
seemed to stand out right before him in letters of fire. He 
went on a little further; then turned round, went baok, and 



TEE WAT TO GOD. 



went into the meeting. He did not hear the sermon ; but the 
words of that short text had got deeply lodged in his heart, 
and that was enough. It is of little account what men say 
if the Word of God only gets an entrance into the sinner's 
heart. He staid after the first meeting was over; and I found 
him there weeping like a child. As I unfolded the Scriptures 
and told him how God had loved him all the time, although 
he had wandered so far away, and how God was waiting to 
receive him and forgive him, the light of the Gospel broke 
into his mind, and he went away rejoicing. 

There is nothing in this world that men prize so much as 
they do Love. Show me a person who has no one to care for 
or love him t and I will show you one of the most wretched 
beings on the face of the earth. Why do people commit sui- 
cide? Very often it is because this thought steals in upon 
them— that no one loves them; and they would rather die 
than live. 

I know of no truth in the whole Bible that ought to come 
home to us with such power and tenderness as that of the 
Love of God; and there is no truth in the Bible that Satan 
would so much like to blot out. For more than six thousand 
years he has been trying to persuade men that God does not 
love them. He succeeded in making our first parents believe 
this he; and he too often succeeds with their children. 

The idea that God does not love us often comes from false 
teaching. Mcihers make a mistake in teaching children that 
God does not love them when they do wrong; but only when 
they do right. That is not taught in Scripture. You do 
not teach your children that when they do wrong you hate 
them. Their wrong-doing does not change your love to hate ; 
if it did, you would change your love a great many times. 
Because your child is fretful, or has committed some act of 
disobedience, you do not cast him out as though he did not 



"LOVE THA T PA SSETH KNO WLEDGE. " 9 

belong to you ! No ! he is still your child ; and you love him. 
And if men have gone astray from God it does not follow that 
He hates them. It is the sin that He hates. 

I believe the reason why a great many people think God 
does not love them is because they are measuring God by 
their own small rule, from their own standpoint. We love 
men as long as we consider them worthy of our love ; when 
they are not we cast them off. It is not so with God. There 
is a vast difference between human love and Divine love. 

In Ephesians iii. 18, we are told of the breadth, and 
length, and depth, and height, of God's love. Many of us 
think we know something of God's love; but centuries hence 
we shall admit we have never found out much about it. Col- 
umbus discovered America; but what did he know about its 
great lakes, rivers, forests, and the Mississippi Valley? He 
died, without knowing much about what he had discovered. 
So, many of us have discovered something of the love of God ; 
but there are heights, depths and lengths of it we do not 
know. That Love is a great ocean; and we require to plunge 
into it before we really know anything of it. It is said of a 
Eoman Catholic Archbishop of Paris, that when he was thrown 
into prison and condemned to be shot, a little while before he 
was led out to die, he eaw a window in his cell in the shape of 
a cross. Upon the top of the cross he wrote "height," at the 
bottom "depth," and at the end of each arm "length." He 
had experienced the truth conveyed in the hymn — 

" When I surrey the wondrous Cross, 
On which the Prince of Glory died. " 

When we wish to know the love of God we should go to 
Calvary. Can we look upon that scene, and say God did not 
love us? That cross speaks of the love of God. Greater love 
never has been taught than that which the cross teaches- 
What prompted God to give up Christ? — what prompted Christ 



10 THE WAY TO GOD. 

to die? — if it were not love? "Greater love hath no man 
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
Christ laid down His life for His enemies ; Christ laid down 
His life for His murderers ; Christ laid down His life for them 
that hated Him; and the spirit of the cross, the spirit of Cal- 
vary, is love. When they were mocking Him and deriding 
Him, what did He say? " Father, forgive them, for they know 
not what they do." That is love. He did not call down fire 
from heaven to consume them; there was nothing but love in 
His heart. 

If you study the Bible you will find that the love of God 
is unchangeable. Many who loved you at one time have per- 
haps grown cold in their affection, and turned away from you : 
it may be that their love is changed to hatred. It is not so 
with God. It is recorded of Jesus Christ, just when He was 
about to be parted from His disciples and led away to Calvary, 
that: "having loved His own which were in the world, He 
loved them unto the end" (John xiii. 1). He knew that one 
of His disciples would betray Him; yet He loved Judas. He 
knew that another disciple would deny Him, and swear that 
he never knew Him ; and yet He loved Peter. It was the love 
which Christ had for Peter that broke his heart, and brought 
him back in penitence to the feet of his Lord. For three years 
Jesus had been with the disciples trying to teach them His 
love, not only by His life and words, but by His works. And, 
on the night of His betrayal, He takes a basin of water, girds 
Himself with a towel, and taking the place of a servant, 
washes their feet; He wanted to convince them of His un- 
changing love. 

There is no portion of Scripture I read so often as John 
xiv; and there is none that is more sweet to me. I never tire 
of reading it. Hear what our Lord says, as He pours out His 
heart to His Disciples : "At that day ye shall know thai I am 



--LOVE THAT PASSE TH KNOWLEDGE? 11 

in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you. He that hath My 
commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me : 
and he that loveth Me shall be loved by My Father" (xiv. 20, 21). 
Think of the great God who created heaven and earth loving 
you and me! . . . "If a man love Me, he will keep My 
words; and My Father will love him; and We will come unto 
him, and make Our abode with him" (v. 23). 

Would to God that our puny minds could grasp this great 
truth, that the Father and the Son so love us that They desire 
to come and abide with us. Not to tarry for a night, but to 
come and abide in our hearts. 

We have another passage more wonderful still in John 
xvii. 23. "I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be 
made perfect in one ; and that the world may know that Thou 
hast sent Me, and hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me." I 
think that is one of the most remarkable sayings that ever fell 
from the lips of Jesus Christ. There is no reason why the 
Father should not love him. He was obedient unto death ; 
He never transgressed the Father's law, or turned aside from 
the path of perfect obedience by one hair's breadth. It is very 
different with us ; and yet, notwithstanding all our rebellion 
and foolishness, He says that if we are trusting in Christ, the 
Father loves us as He loves the Son. Marvellous love ! Won- 
derful love ! That God can possibly love us as He loves His 
own Son seems too good to be true. Yet that is the teaching 
of Jesus Christ. 

It is hard to make a sinner believe in this unchangeable 
love of God. When a man has wandered away from God he 
thinks that God hates him. We must make a distinction 
between sin and the sinner. God loves the sinner; but he 
hates the sin. He hates sin, because it mars human life. 
It is just because God loves the sinner that He hates sin. 

God's love is not only unchangeable, but xmfailing. In 
Isaiah xlix. 15, 16 we read: _^Can a woman forget her sucking 



12 THE WAY TO GOD. 



child that she should not have compassion on the son o. her 
womb? yea, they may forget; yet will I not forget thee. Be- 
hold I have graven thee upon the palms of My haDds; thy 
walls are continually before Me." 

Now the strongest human love that we know of is a 
mother's love. Many things will separate a man from his wife. 
A father may turn his back on his child ; brothers and sisters 
may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their 
wives; wives, their husbands. But a mother's love endures 
through all. In good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the 
world's condemnation, a mother loves on, and hopes that her 
child may turn from his evil ways and repent. She remem- 
bers the infant smiles, the merry laugh of childhood, the 
promise of youth ; and she can never be brought to think hin? 
unworthy. Death cannot quench a mother's love; it is 
stronger than death. 

You have seen a mother watching over her sick child. 
How willingly she would take the disease into her own body 
if she could thus relieve her child! Week after week she will 
keep watch ; she will let no one else take care of that sick child. 

A friend of mine, some time ago, was visiting in a beauti- 
ful home where he met a number of friends. After they had 
all gone away, having left something behind, he went back to 
get it. There he found the lady of the house, a wealthy lady, 
sitting behind a poor fellow who looked like a tramp. He was 
her own son. Like the prodigal, he had wandered far away: 
yet the mother said, " This ia my boy; I love him still." Take 
a mother with nine or ten children, if one goes astray, she 
seems to love that one more than any of the rest. 

X leading minister in the state of New York once told me 
of a father who was a very bad character. The mother did all 
she could to prevent the contamination of the boy ; . but the 
influence of the father was stronger, and he led his son into 



'LOVE THAT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE." 18 

f ■ — — 

all kinds of sin until the lad became one of the worst of 
criminals. He committed murder, and was put on his trial. 
All through the trial, the widowed mother (for the father had 
died) sat in the court. When the witnesses testified against 
the boy it seemed to hurt the mother much more than the son. 
When he was found guilty and sentenced to die, every one else 
feeling the justice of the verdict, seemed satisfied at the result. 
But the mother's love never faltered. She begged for a 
reprieve ; but that was denied. After the execution she craved 
for the body; and this also was refused. According to custom, 
it was buried in the prison yard. A little while afterward.' 
the mother herself died ; but, before she was taken away, she 
expressed a desire to be buried by the side of her boy. She 
was not ashamed of being known as the mother of a murderer. 

The story is told of a young woman in Scotland, who left 
her home, and became an outcast in Glasgow. Her mother 
sought her far and wide, but in vain. At last, she caused her 
picture to be hung upon the walls of the Midnight Mission 
rooms, where abandoned women resorted. Many gave the 
picture a passing glance. One lingered by the picture. It it 
the same dear face that looked down upon her in her childhood. 
She has not forgotten nor cast off her sinning child ; or her 
picture would never have been hung upon those walls. The 
lips seemed to open, and whisper, "Come home; I forgive you, 
and love you still." The poor girl sank down overwhelmed 
with her feelings. She was the prodigal daughter. The 
light of her mother's face had broken her heart. She became 
truly penitent for her sins, and with a heart full of sorrow and 
shame, returned to her forsaken home; and mother and 
daughter were once more united. 

But let me tell you that no mother's love is to be com- 
pared with the love of God ; it does not measure the height o* 
the depth of God's love. No mother in this world ever 
loved her child as God loves you and me. Think of the love 



i4 THE WAT TO GOD. 

that God must have had when He gave His Son to die for the 
world. I used to think a good deal more of Christ than I did 
of the Father. Somehow or other I had the idea that God 
wai a stern judge; that Christ came between me and God, and 
appeased the anger of God. But after I became a father, and 
for years had an only son, as I looked at my boy I thought of 
the Father giving His Son to die ; and it seemed to me as if it 
required more love for the Father to give His Son than for the 
Son to die. Oh, the love that God must have had for the 
world when He gave His Son to die for it ! "God so loved the 
world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" 
(John iii, 16). I have never been able to preach from that 
text. I have often thought I would ; but it is so high that I 
can never climb to its height; I have just quoted it and 
passed on. Who can fathom the depth of those words : "God 
so loved the world?" We can never scale the heights of Hia 
love or fathom its depths. Paul prayed that he might 
know the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth, of 
the love of God; but it was past his finding out. It~"passeth 
knowledge" (Eph. iii. 19). 

Nothing speaks to us of the love of God, like the cross of" 
Christ. Come with me to Calvary, and look upon the Son of 
God as He hangs there. Can you hear that piercing cry from 
His dying lips : "Father, forgive them; for they know not 
what they do!" and say that He does not love you? "Greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for 
his friends" (John xv. 13). But Jesus Christ laid down His 
life for Ms enemies. 

Another thought is this : He loved us long before we ever 
thought of Him. The idea that he does not love us until we 
first love Him is not to be found in Scripture. In 1 John iv. 
10, it is written : "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but 
that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for 



"LOVE THAT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE." 15 

our sins." He loved us before we ever thought of loving Him. 
You loved your children before they knew anything about 
your love. And so, long before we ever thought of God, we 
were in His thoughts. 

What brought the prodigal home? It was the thought 
that his father loved him. Suppose the news had reached 
him that he was cast off, and that his father did not care for 
him any more, would he have gone back? Never! But the 
thought dawned upon him that his father loved him still : so 
he rose up, and went back to his home. Dear reader, the 
love of the Father ought to bring us back to Him. It was 
Adam's calamity and sin that revealed God's love. When 
Adam fell God came down and dealt in mercy with him. If 
any one is lost it will not be because God does not love him : 
it will be because he has resisted the love of God. 

What will make Heaven attractive? Is it the pearly gates 
or the golden streets? No. Heaven will be attractive, be- 
cause there we shall behold Him who loved us so much as to 
give His only-begotten Son to die for us. What makes home 
attractive? Is it the beautiful furniture and stately rooms? 
No; some homes with all these are like whited sepulchres. In 
Brooklyn a mother was dying; and it was necessary to take 
her child from her, because the little child could not under- 
stand the nature of the sickness, and disturbed her mother. 
Every night the child sobbed herself to sleep in a neighbor's 
house, because she wanted to go back to her mother's; but 
the mother grew worse, and they could not take the child 
home. At last the mother died ; and after her death they 
thought it best not to let the child see her dead mother in her 
coffin. After the burial the child ran into one room crying 
"Mamma! mamma!" and then into another crying "Mamma! 
mamma ! " and so went over the whole house : and when the 
little creature failed to find that loved one she cried to be taken 



/6 TEE WAT TO OuD. 

back to the neighbors. So what makes heaven attractive ie 
the thought that we shall see Christ who has loved us and 
given Himself for us. 

If you ask me why God should love us, I cannot tell. I 
suppose it is because He is a true Father. It is His nature to 
love; just as it is the nature of the sun to shine. He wants 
you to share in that love. Do not let unbelief keep you away 
from Him. Do not think that, because you are a sinner, God 
does not love you, or care for you. He does ! He wants to 
save you and bless you. 

"When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ 
died for the ungodly" (Eom. v. 6). Is that not enough to con- 
vince you that He loves you? He would not have died for you 
if He had not loved you. Is your heart so hard that you can 
brace yourself up against His love, and spurn and despise it? 
You can do it; but it will be at your peril. 

I can imagine some saying to themselves, "Yes, we be- 
lieve that God loves us, if we love Him ; we believe that God 
loves the pure and the holy." Let me say, my friend, not 
only does God love the pure and the holy : He also loves the 
ungodly. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, 
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Eom. v. 8). God 
sent him to die for the sins of the whole world. If you belong 
to the world, then you have part and lot in this love that has 
been exhibited in the cross of Christ. 

There is a passage in Eevelation (i. 5.) which I think a 
great deal of — "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us." 
It might be thought that God would first wash us, and then 
love us. But no, He first loved us. About eight years ago 
the whole country was intensely excited about Charlie Boss, a 
child of four years old, who was stolen. Two men in a gig 
asked him and an elder brother if they wanted some candy. 
They then drove away with the younger boy, leaving the eldeir 



"LOVE THAT PASSETH KNOWLEDGES 17 

one. For many years a search has been made in every State 
and territory. Men have been over to Great Britain, France, 
and Germany, and have hunted in vain for the child. The 
mother still lives in the hope that she will see her long lost 
Charhe. I never remember the whole country to have been 
so much agitated about any event unless it was the assassin- 
ation of President Garfield. Well, suppose the mother of 
Charlie Ross were in some meeting; and that while the 
preacher was speaking, she happened to look down amongst 
the audience and see her long lost son. Suppose that he was 
poor, dirty and ragged, shoeless and coatless, what would she 
do? Would she wait till he was washed and decently clothed 
before she would acknowledge him? No, she would get off 
the platform at once, rush towards him and take him in her 
arms. After that she would cleanse and clothe him. So it is 
with God. He loved us, and washed us. I can imagine one 
saying, "If God loves me, why does He not make me good?" 
God wants sons and daughters in heaven ; He does not want 
machines or slaves. He could break our stubborn hearts, but 
He wants to draw us towards Himself by the cords of love. 

He wanted you to sit down with Him at the marriage sup- 
per of the Lamb; to wash you, and make you whiter than 
snow. He wants you to walk with Him the crystal pavement 
of yonder blissful world. He wants to adopt you into His 
family; and to make you a son or a daughter of heaven. Will 
you trample His love under your feet? or will you, this hour,, 
give yourself to Him? 

When our terrible civil war was going on, a mother re- 
' ceived the news that her boy had been wounded in the battle 
of the "Wilderness. She took the first train, and started for 
her boy, although the order had gone forth from the War 
Department that no more women should be admitted within 
the lines. But a mother's love knows nothing about orders ; 



18 THE WAY TO OOD. 



■o she managed by tears and entreaties to get through the 
lines to the Wilderness. At last she found the hospital where 
her boy was. Then she went to the doctor and she said : 
" Will you let me go to the ward and nurse my boy?" 

The doctor said: <( I have just got your boy to sleep; he 
is in a very critical state ; and I am afraid if you wake him up 
the excitement will be so great that it will carry him off. You 
had better wait awhile, and remain without until I tell him 
that you have come, and break the news gradually to him." 
The mother looked into the doctor's face and said : " Doctor, 
supposing my boy does not wake up, and I should never see 
him alive! Let me go and sit down by his side; I won't 
speak to him." " If you will not speak to him you may 
do so," said the doctor. 

She crept to the cot and looked into the face of her boy. 
How she had longed to look at him ! How her eyes seemed 
to be feasting as she gazed upon his countenance! When she 
got near enough she could not keep her hands off; she laid 
that tender, loving hand Upon his brow. The moment the 
hand touched the forehead of her boy, he, without opening 
his eyes, cried out: "Mother, you have come!" He knew 
the touch of that loving hand. There was love and sympathy 
in it. 

Ah, sinner, if you feel the loving touch of Jesus you will 
recognize it ; it is so full of tenderness. The world may treat 
you unkindly ; but Christ never will. You will never have a 
better Friend in this world. What you need is — to come to- 
day to Him. Let His loving arm be underneath you; let His 
loving hand be about you ; and He will hold you with mighty 
power. He will keep you, and fill that heart of yours with 
His tenderness and love. 

I can imagine some of you saying, " How shall I go to 
Him?" Why, just as you would go to your mother. Have 



"LOVE THAT PASS-ETH KNOWLEDGE." 19 

you done your mother a great injury and a great wrong? If 
so, you go to her and you say, " Mother, I want you to for- 
give me." Treat Christ in the same way. Go to Him to-day 
and tell Him that you have not loved Him, that you have not 
treated Him right ; confess you sins, and see how quickly He 
will bless you. 

I am reminded of another incident — that of a boy who 
had been tried by court-martial and ordered to be shot. The 
hearts of the father and mother were broken when they heard 
the news. In that home was a little girl. She had read the 
life of Abraham Lincoln, and she said: "Now, if Abraham 
Lincoln knew hoW my father and mother loved their boy, he 
would not let my brother be shot." She wanted her father to 
go to Washington to plead for his boy. But the fatber said : 
"No; there is no use; the law must take its course. They 
have refused to pardon one or two who have been sentenced 
by that court-martial, and an order has gone forth that the 
President is not going to interfere again ; if a man has been 
sentenced by court-martial he must suffer the consequences." 
That father and motber had not faith to believe that their boy 
might be pardoned. 

But the little girl was strong in hope ; she got on the train 
away up in Vermont, and started off to Washington. When 
she reached the White House the soldiers refused to let her in; 
but she told her pitiful story, and they allowed her to pass. 
When she got to the Secretary's room, where the President's 
private secretary was, he refused to allow her to enter the 
private office of the President. But the little girl told her 
story, and it touched the heart of the private secretary; so he 
passed her in. As she went into Abraham Lincoln's room, 
there were United States senators, generals, governors and 
leading politicians, who were there about important business 
about the war; but the President happened to see that child 



20 THE WAY TO GOD. 



standing at his door. He wanted to know what she wanted, 
and she went right to him and told her story in her own lan- 
guage. He was a father, and the great tears trickled down 
Abraham Lincoln's cheeks. He wrote a dispatch and sent it 
to the army to have that boy sent to Washington at once, 
"When he arrived, the President pardoned him, gave him thirty 
days' furlough, and sent him home with the little girl to cheer 
the hearts of the father and mother. 

Do you want to know how to go to Christ? Go just as 
that little girl went to Abraham Lincoln. It may be possible 
that you have a dark story to tell. Tell it all out ; keep noth- 
ing back. If Abraham Lincoln had compassion on that little 
girl, heard her petition and answered it, do you think the 
Lord Jesus will not hear your prayer? Do you think that 
Abraham Lincoln, or any man that ever lived on earth, had 
as much compassion as Christ? No! He will be touched when 
no one else will; He will have mercy when no one else will; 
He will have pity when no one else will. If you will go right 
to Him, confessing your sin and your need, He will save you. 

A few years ago a man left England and went to America. 
He was an Englishman ; but he was naturalized, and so be- 
came an American citizen. After a few years he felt restless 
and dissatisfied, and went to Cuba ; and after he had been in 
Cuba a little while civil war broke out there; it was in 1867; 
and this man was arrested by the Spanish government as a 
spy. He was tried by court-martial, found guilty and ordered 
to be shot. The whole trial was conducted in the Spanish 
language, and the poor man did not know what was going on. 
When they told him the verdict, that he was found guilty and 
had been condemned to be shot, he sent to the American Con' 
sul and the English Consul, and laid the whok case before 
them, proving his innocence and claiming protection. The* 
examined the case, and found that this man whom the Spas* 



"LOVE THAT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE." 21 

ish officers had condemned to be shot was perfectly innocent; 
they went to the Spanish General and said, " Look here, this 
man whom you have condemned to death is an innocent man ; 
he is not guilty." But the Spanish General said, " He has 
been tried by our law; he has been found guilty; he must 
die." There was no electric cable; and these men could not 
consult with their governments. 

The morning came on which the man was to be executed. 
He was brought out sitting on his coffin in a cart, and drawn 
to the place where he was to be executed. A grave was dug. 
They took the coffin out of the cart, placed the young man 
upon it, took the black cap, and were just pulling it down over 
his face. The Spanish soldiers awaited the order to fire. But 
just then the American and English Consuls rode up. The 
English Consul sprang out of the carriage and took the union 
jack, the British flag, and wrapped it around the man, and the 
American Consul wrapped around him the star-spangled ban- 
ner, and then turning to the Spanish officers they said : " Fire 
upon those flags if you dare." They did not dare to fire upon 
the flags. There were two great governments behind those 
flags. That was the secret of it. 

"He brought me to the banqueting house, and His banner 
over me was love. . . . His left hand is under my head 
and His right hand doth embrace me" (Song Sol. ii. 4, 6). 
Thank God we can come under the banner to-day if we will. 
Any poor sinner can come under that banner to-day. His 
banner of love is over us. Blessed Gospel; blessed, precious, 
news. Believe it to-day; receive it into your heart; and enter 
into a new life. Let the love of God be shed abroad in your 
heart by the Holy Ghost to-day: it will drive away darkness; 
it will drive away gloom; it will drive away sin; and peace 
and joy shall be yourB. 



22 THE WAY TO GOD. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 

" Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God." 
(John iii. 3.) 

Theee is no portion of the Word of God, perhaps, with 
■which we are more familiar than this passage. I suppose if I 
were to ask those in any audience if they believed that Jesus 
Christ taught the doctrine of the New Birth, nine tenths of 
them would say: "Yes, I believe He did." 

Now if the words of this text are true they embody one of 
the most solemn questions that can come before us. We can 
afford to be deceived about many things rather than about 
this one thing. Christ makes it very plain. He says, " Ex- 
cept a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God" 
: — much less inherit it. This doctrine of the New Birth is 
therefore the foundation of all our hopes for the world to come* 
It is really the A B C of the Christian religion. My experi- 
ence has been this — that if a man is unsound on this doctrine 
he will be unsound on almost every other fundamental doc- 
trine in the Bible. A true understanding of this subjeet will 
help a man to solve a thousand difficulties that he may meet 
with in the Word of God. Things that before seemed very 
dark and mysterious will become very plain. 

The doctrine of the New Birth upsets all false religion — 
all false views about the Bible and about God. A friend of 
mine once told me that in one of his after-meetings, a man 
came to him with a long list of questions written out for him 
to answer. He said : " If you can answer these questions sat- 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 23 

isfactorily, I have made up my mind to be a Christian." " Do 
you not think," said my friend, " that you hau better come to 
Christ first? Then you can look into these questions." The 
man thought that perhaps he had better do so. After he had 
received Christ, he looked again at his list of questions; but 
then it seemed to him as if they had all been answered. Nico- 
demus came with his troubled mind, and Christ said to him, 
" Ye must be born again." He was treated altogether differ- 
ently from what he expected ; but I venture to say that was 
the most blessed night in all his life. To be " born again" is 
the greatest blessing that will ever come to us in this world. 

Notice how the Scripture puti it. " Except a man be born 
again," " born from above,"* " born of the Spirit." From 
amongst a number of other passages where we find this word 
"except," I would just name three. " Except ye repent, ye 
shall all likewise perish." (Luke xiii. 3, 5.) "Except ye be 
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter in- 
to the kingdom of heaven." (Matt, xviii. 3.) " Except your 
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes 
and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." (Matt. v. 20.) They all really mean the same 
thing. 

I am so thankful that our Lord spoke of the New Birth to 
this ruler of the Jews, this doctor of the law, rather than to 
the woman at the well of Samaria, or to Matthew the publican, 
or to Zaccheus. If He had reserved his teaching on this great 
matter for these three, or such as these, people would have 
said: " Oh yes, these publicans and harlots need to be con- 
verted: but I am an upright man; I do not need to be con- 
verted." I suppose Nicodemus was one of the best specimens 
of the people of Jerusalem : there was nothing on record 
Against him. 

•John ill. 3. Marginal reading, 



24 THE WAY TO GOD. 

I think it is scarcely necessary for me to prove that we 
need to be born again before we are meet for heaven. I ven- 
ture to say that there is no candid man but would say he is 
not fit for the kingdom of God, until he is born of another 
Spirit. The Bible teaohes us that man by nature is lost and 
guilty, and our experience confirms this. We know also that 
the best and holiest man, if he turn away from God, will very 
soon fall into sin. 

Now, let me say what Eegeneration is not. It is not go- 
ing to church. Yery often I see people, and ask them if they 
are Christians. "Yes, of course I am; at least, I think lam: 
I go to church every Sunday." Ah, but this is not Eegenera- 
tion. Others say, "I am trying to do what is right — am I 
not a Christian? Is not that a new birth?" No. What has 
that to do with being born again? There is yet another class 
— those who have " turned over a new leaf," and think they 
are regenerated. No ; forming a new resolution is not being 
born again. 

Nor will being baptized do you any good. Yet you hear 
people say, " Why, I have been baptized; and I was born again 
when I was baptized." They believe that because they were 
baptized into the church, they were baptized into the Kingdom 
of God. I tell you that it is utterly impossible. You may be 
baptized into the church, and yet not be baptized into the Son 
of God. Baptism is all right in its place. God forbid that I 
should say anything against it. But if you put that in the 
place of Eegeneration — in the place of the New Birth — it is a 
terrible mistake. You cannot be baptized into the Kingdom of 
God. " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the King- 
dom of God. " If any one reading this rests his hopes on any- 
thing else — on any other foundation — I pray that God may 
sweep it away. 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 25 

Another class say, " I go to the Lord's Supper; I partake 
uniformly of the Sacrament." Blessed ordinance! Jesus 
hath said that as often as ye do it ye commemorate His death. 
Yet, that is not being " born again;" that is not passing from 
death unto life. Jesus says plainly — and so plainly that there 
need not be any mistake about it — " Except a man be born of 
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. " What 
has a sacrament to do with that? What has going to church 
to do with being born again ? 

Another man comes up and says, " I say my prayers reg- 
ularly." Still I say that is not being born of the Spirit. It is 
a very solemn question, then, that comes up before us ; and oh ! 
that every reader would ask himself earnestly and faithfully: 
" Have I been born again? Have I been born of the Spirit? 
Have I passed from death unto life?" 

There is a class of men who say that special religious 
meetings are very good for a certain class of people. They 
would be very good if you could get the drunkard there, or get 
the gambler there, or get other vicious people there — that 
would do a great deal of good. But "we do not need to be 
converted." To whom did Christ utter these words of wis- 
dom? To Nicodemus. Who was Nicodemus? Was he a 
drunkard, a gambler, or a thief? No! No doubt he was one 
of the very best men in Jerusalem. He was an honorable 
Councillor; he belonged to the Sanhedrim; he held a very 
high position ; he was an orthodox man ; he was one of the 
very soundest men. And yet what did Christ say to him? 
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God." 

But I can imagine some one saying, " What am I to do? 
I cannot create life. I certainly cannot save myself." You 
certainly cannot ; and we do not claim that you can. We tell 
you it is utterly impossible to make a man better without 



26 THE WAY TO GOD. 

Christ; but that is what men are trying to do. They are try- 
ing to patch up this " old Adam" nature. There must be a 
new creation. Eegeneration is a new creation ; and if it is a 
new creation it must be the work of God. In the first chapter 
of Genesis man does not appear. There is no one there but 
God. Man is not there to take part. When God created the 
earth He was alone. "When Christ redeemed the world He was 
alone. 

" That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which 
is born of the Spirit is spirit." (John hi. 6.) The Ethiopian 
cannot change his skin, and the leopard cannot change his 
spots. You might as well try to make yourselves pure and 
holy without the help of God. It would be just as easy for 
you to do that as for the black man to wash himself white. A 
man might just as well try to leap over the moon as to serve 
God in the flesh. Therefore, " that which is born of the flesh 
is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 

Now God tells us in this chapter how we are to get into 
His kingdom. We are not to work our way in — not but that 
salvation is worth working for. We admit all that. If there 
were rivers and mountains in the way, it would be well worth 
while to swim those rivers, and climb- those mountains. There 
is no doubt that salvation is worth all that effort; but we do 
not obtain it by our works. It is " to him that worketh not, 
but believeth " (Rom. iv. 5). We work because we are saved; 
we do not work to be saved. We work from the cross ; but 
not towards it. It is written, " Work out your own salvation 
with fear and trembling" (Phil. ii. 12), Why, you must 
have your salvation before you can work it out. Suppose I 
say to my little boy, " I want you to spend that hundred dol- 
lars carefully." " Well," he says, " let me have the hundred 
dollars; and I will be careful how I spend it." I remember 
when I first left home and went to Boston; I had spent all my 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 27 



money, and I went to the post-office three times a day. I 
knew there was only one mail a day from home ; but I thought 
by some possibility there might be a letter for me. At last I 
received a letter from my little sister; and oh, how glad I was 
to get it. She had heard that there were a great many pick- 
pockets in Boston, and a large part of that letter was to urge 
me to be very careful not to let anybody pick my pocket. Now 
I required to have something in my pocket before I could 
have it picked. So you must have salvation before you can 
work it out. 

When Christ cried out on Calvary, "It is finished!" He 
meant what He said. All that men have to do now is just to 
accept of the work of Jesus Christ. There is no hope for man 
or woman so long as they are trying to work out salvation for 
themselves. I can imagine there are some people who will 
say, as Nicodemus possibly did, "This is a very mysterious 
thing." I see the scowl on that Pharisee's brow as he says, 
"How can these things be?" It sounds very strange to his 
ear. "Born again; born of the Spirit! How can tbese things 
be?" A great many people say, "You must reason it out; but 
if you do not reason it out, do not ask us to believe it. " I can 
imagine a great many people saying that. When you ask me 
to reason it out, I tell you frankly I cannot do it. "The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it 
goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." (John hi. 
8.) I do not understand everything about the wind. You 
ask me to reason it out. I cannot. It may blow, due north 
here, and a hundred miles away due south. I may go up a 
few hundred feet, and find it blowing in an entirely opposite 
direction from what it is down iere. You ask me to explain 
these currents of wind ; but suppose that, because I cannot 
explain them, and do not understand them, I were to take my 



28 THE WAY TO GOD. 



stand and assert, "Oh, there is no such thing as wind." I 
can imagine some little girl saying, "I know more about it 
than that man does ; often have I heard the wind, and felt it 
blowing against my face;" and she might say, "Did not the 
wind blow my umbrella out of my hands the other day? and 
did I not see it blow a man's hat off in the street? Have I 
not seen it blow the trees in the forest, and the growing corn 
in the country?" 

You might just as well tell me that there is no such 
thing as wind, as tell me there is no such thing as a man 
being born of the Spirit. I have felt the spirit of God working 
in my heart, just as really and as truly as I have felt the wind 
blowing in my face. I cannot reason it out. There are a great 
many things I cannot reason out, but which I believe. I 
never could reason out the creation. I can see the world, but 
I cannot tell how God made it out of nothing. But almost 
©very man will admit there was a creative power. 

There are a great many things that I cannot explain and 
cannot reason out, and yet that I believe. I heard a commer? 
cial traveler say that he had heard that the ministry and 
religion of Jesus Christ were matters of revelation and not of 
investigation. "When it pleased God to reveal His Son in 
Me," says Paul (Gal. i, 15, 16). There was a party of young 
men together, going up the country; and on their journey 
they made up their minds not to believe anything they could 
not reason out. An old man heard them ; and presently he 
said, "I heard you say you would not believe anything you 
could not reason out." "Yes," they said, "that is so." 
"Well," he said, "coming down on the train to-day, I noticed 
some geese, some sheep, some swine, and some cattle aU 
eating grass. Can you tell me by what process that same 
grass was turned into hair, feathers, bristles and wool? Do 
you believe it is a fact?" "Oh yes," they said, "we cannot 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 29 

help believing that, though we fail to understand it." "Well," 
said the old man, "I cannot help believing in Jesus Christ." 
And I cannot help believing in the regeneration of man, when 
I see men who have been reclaimed, when I see men who have 
been reformed. Have not some of the very worst men been 
regenerated — been picked up out of the pit, and had their feet 
set upon the Bock, and a new song put in their mouths? 
Their tongues were cursing and blaspheming; and now are 
occupied in praising God. Old things have passed away, and 
all things have become new. They are not reformed only, but 
regenerated — new men in Christ Jesus. 

Down there in the dark alleys of one of our great cities is 
a poor drunkard. I think if you want to get near hell, you 
should go to a poor drunkard's home. Go to the house of that 
poor miserable drunkard. Is there anything more like hell on 
earth? See the want and distress that reign there. But 
hark ! A footstep is heard at the door, and the children run 
and hide themselves. The patient wife waits to meet the 
man. He has been her torment. Many a time she has borne 
about the marks of his blows for weeks. Many a time that 
strong right hand has been brought down on her defenseless 
head. And now she waits expecting to hear his oaths and 
suffer his brutal treatment. He comes in and says to her: "I 
have been to the meeting; and I heard there that if I will I 
can be converted. I believe that God is able to save me." 
Go down to that house again in a few weeks: and what a 
change ! As you approach you hear some one singing. It is 
not the song of a reveller, but the strains of that good old 
hymn, "Bock of Ages." The children are no longer afraid of 
the man, but cluster around his knee. His wife is near him, 
her face lit up with a happy glow. Is not that a picture of 
Regeneration? I can take you to many such homes, made 
happy by the regenerating power of the religion of Christ. 



30 THE WAY TO OOD. 



"What men want is the power to overcome temptation, the 
power to lead a right life. 

The only way to get into the kingdom of God is to be 
"born" into it. The law of this country requires that the 
President should be born in the country. When foreigners 
come to our shores they have no right to complain against 
such a law, which forbids them from ever becoming Presidents. 
Now, has not God a right to make a law that all those who 
become heirs of eternal life must be " born " into His king- 
dom? 

An unregenerated man would rather be in hell than in 
heaven. Take a man whose heart is full of corruption and 
wickedness, and place him in heaven among the pure, the holy 
and the redeemed ; and he would not want to stay there. Cer- 
tainly, if we are to be happy in heaven we must begin to make 
a heaven here on earth. Heaven is a prepared place for a 
prepared people. If a gambler or a blasphemer were taken 
out of the streets of New York and placed on the crystal pave- 
ment of heaven and under the shadow of the tree of life, he 
would say, " I do not want to stay here." If men were taken 
to heaven just as they are by nature, without having their 
hearts regenerated, there would be another rebellion in heaven. 
Heaven is filled with a company of those who have been twice 



In the 14th and 15th verses of this chapter we read " Aa» 
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must 
the Son of Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have eternal life." " whosoever. n 
Mark that ! Let me tell you who are unsaved what God haa 
done for you. He has done everything that He could do to- 
ward your salvation. You need not wait for God to do any- 
thing more. In one place he asks the question, what more 
could he have done (Isaiah v. 4). He sent His prophets, and 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 31 

tbey killed them; then He sent His heloved Son, and they 
murdered Him. Now He has sent the Holy Spirit to con- 
vince us of sin, and to show how we are to be saved. 

In this chapter we are told how men are to be saved, 
namely, by Him who was lifted up on the cross. Just as 
Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, so must 
the Son of Man be lifted up, " that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have eternal life." Some men com- 
plain and say that it is very unreasonable that they should be 
held responsible for the sin of a man six thousand years ago. 
It was not long ago that a man was talking to me about 
this injustice, as he called it. If a man thinks he is going 
to answer God in that way, I tell you it will not do him any 
gocd. If you are lost, it will not be on account of Adam's sin. 

Let me illustrate this; and perhaps you will be better able 
to understand it. Suppose I am dying of consumption, which 
I inherited from my father or mother. I did not get the dis- 
ease by any fault of my own, by any neglect of my health; I 
inherited it, let us suppose. A friend happens to come along: 
he looks at me, and says: " Moody, you are in a consump- 
tion." I reply, " I know it very well; I do not want any one 
to tell me that." " But," he says, " there is a remedy." 
" But, sir, I do not believe it. I have tried the leading 
physicians in this country and in Europe; and they tell me 
there is no hope." "But you know me, Moody; you have 
known me for years." " Yes, sir." " Do you think, then, I 
would tell you a falsehood?" " No." " Well, ten years ago 
I was as far gone. I was given up by the physicians to die; 
but I took this medicine and it cured me. I am perfectly 
well: look at me." I say that it is "a very strange case." 
" Yes, it may be strange; but it is a fact. This medicine 
cured me : take this medicine, and it will cure you. Although 
it hai cost me a great deal, it shall not cost you anything. Do 



32 THE WAT TO GOD. 

not make light of it, I beg of you." " Well," I say, " I should 
like to believe you; but this is contrary to my reason." 

Hearing this, my friend goes away and returns with an- 
other friend, and that one testifies to the same thing. I am 
still disbelieving; so he goes away, and brings in another 
friend, and another, and another, and another; and they all 
testify to the same thing. They say they were as bad as my- 
self ; that they took the same medicine that has been offered 
tome; and that it has cured them. My friend then hands 
me the medicine. I dash it to the ground ; I do not believe in 
its saving power; I die. The reason is then that I spurned 
the remedy. So, if you perish, it will not be because Adarq 
fell ; but because you spurned the remedy offered to save you. 
You will choose darkness rather than light. "How then shall 
ye escape, if ye neglect so great salvation?" There is no hope 
for you if you neglect the remedy. It does no good to look at 
the wound. If we had been in the Israelitish camp and had 
been bitten by one of the fiery serpents, it would have done us 
no good to look at the wound. Looking at the wound will 
never save any one. What you must do is to look at the 
Remedy — look away to Him who hath power to save you, 
from your sin. 

Behold the camp of the Israelites; look at the scene that 
is pictured to your eyes! Many are dying because they 
neglect the remedy that is offered. In that arid desert is 
many a short and tiny grave ; many a child has been bitten by 
the fiery serpents. Fathers and mothers are bearing away 
their children. Over yonder they are just burying a mother; 
a loved mother is about to be laid in the earth. All the family, 
weeping, gather around the beloved form. You hear the 
mournful cries; you see the bitter tears. The father is being 
borne away to his last resting place. There is wailing going 
up all over the camp. Tears are pouring down for thousandg 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 38 

who have passed away; thousands more are dying; and the 
plague is raging from one end of the camp to the other. 

I see in one tent an Israelitish mother bending over the 
form of a beloved boy just coming into the bloom of life, just 
budding into manhood. She is wiping away the sweat of 
death that is gathering upon his brow. Yet a little while, 
and his eyes are fixed and glassy, for life is ebbing fast away. 
The mother's heart-strings are torn and bleeding. All at once 
she hears a noise in the camp. A great shout goes up. What 
does it mean? She goes to the door of the tent. " What is 
the noise in the camp?" she asks those passing by. And 
some one says: *' Why, my good woman, have you not heard 
the good news that has come into the camp?" " No," says 
the woman, " Good news! What is it?" " Why, have you 
not heard about it? God has provided a remedy." "What! 
for the bitten Israelites? Oh, tell me what the remedy is!" 
" Why, God has instructed Moses to make a brazen serpent, 
and to put it on a pole in the middle of the camp ; and He 
has declared that whosoever looks upon it shall live. The 
■hout that you hear is the shout of the people when they see 
the serpent lifted up." The mother goes back into the tent, 
and she says: " My boy, I have good news to tell you. You 
need not die! My boy, my boy, I have come with good 
tidings; you can five!" He is already getting stupefied; he is 
so weak he cannot walk to the door of the tent. She puts her 
itrong arms under him and lifts him up. " Look yonder; 
look right there under the hill!" But the boy does not see 
anything; he says — "I do not see anything; what is it» 
mother?" And she says: "Keep looking, and you will «ee 
it." At last he catches a glimpse of the glistening serpent; 
and lo, he is weU ! And thus it is with many a young convert. 
Some men say, " Oh, we do not believe in sudden conver- 
sions." How long did it take to cure that boy? How long 



34 THE WAY TO GOD. 

did it take to cure those serpent-bitten Israelites? It was just 
a look ; and they were well. 

That Hebrew boy is a young convert. I can fancy that I 
see him now calling on all those who were with him to praise 
God. He sees another young man bitten as he was ; and he 
runs up to him and tells him, " You need not die." " Oh,'' 
the young man replies, "I cannot live; it is not possible. 
There is not a physician in Israel who can cure me." He does 
not know that he need not die. " Why, have you not heard 
the news? God has provided a remedy." " What remedy?" 
" Why, God has told Moses to lift up a brazen serpent, and 
has said that none of those who look upon that serpent shall 
die." I can just imagine the young man. He may be what 
you call an intellectual young man. He says to the young 
convert: " You do not think I am going to believe anything 
like that? If the physicians in Israel cannot cure me, how do 
you think that an old brass serpent on a pole is going to cure 
me?" " Why, sir, I wag as bad as yourself!" " You do not 
say so!" "Yes, I do." "That is the most astonishing 
thing I ever heard," says the young man: "I wish you 
would explain the philosophy of it."' "I cannot. I only 
know that I looked at that serpent, and I was cured : that did 
it. I just looked; that is all. My mother told me the re- 
ports that were being heard through the camp; and I just be- 
lieved what my mother said, and I am perfectly well." " Well, 
I do not believe you were bitten as badly as I have been." 
The young man pulls up his sleeve. "Look there! That 
mark shows where I was bitten ; and I tell you I was worse 
than you are." " Well, if I understood the philosophy of it I 
would look and get well." " Let your philosophy go : look and 
live." " But, sir, you ask me to do an unreasonable thing. 
If God had said, Take the brass and rub it into the wound, 
there might be something in the brass that would cure the bite. 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 35 



Young man, explain the philosophy of it." I have often seen 
people before me who have talked in that way. But the 
young man calls in another, and takes him into the tent, and 
says: " Just tell him how the Lord saved you;" and he tells 
just the same story; and he calls in others, and tbey all say 
the same thing. 

The young man says it is a very strange thing. " If the 
Lord had told Moses to go and get some herbs, or roots, and 
stew them, and take the decoction as a medicine, there would 
be something in that. But it is so contrary to nature to 
do such a thing as look at the serpent, that I cannot do it." 
At length his mother, who has been out in the camp, comes 
in, and she says, " My boy, I have just the best news in 
the world for you. I was in the camp, and I saw hun- 
dreds who were very far gone, and they are all perfectly 
well now." The young man says: "I should like to get 
well; it is a very painful thought to die; I want to go into 
the promised land, and it is terrible to die here in this wilder- 
ness; but the fact is — I do not understand the remedy. It 
does not appeal to my reason. I cannot believe that I can 
get well in a moment." And the young man dies in conse- 
quence of his own unbelief. 

God provided a remedy for this bitten Israelite — u Look 
and live!" And there is eternal life for every poor sinner. 
Look, and you can be saved, my reader, this very hour. God 
has provided a remedy; and it is offered to all. The trouble 
is, a great many people are looking at the pole. Do not look 
at the pole ; that is the church. You need not look at the 
church ; the church is all right, but the church cannot save 
you. Look beyond the pole. Look at the Crucified One. 
Look to Calvary. Bear in mind, sinner, that Jesus died for 
all. You need not look at ministers; they are just God's 
chosen instruments to hold up the Remedy, to hold up Christ. 



TEE WAT TO GOD. 



And so, my friends, take your eyes off from men ; take your 
eyes off from the church. Lift them up to Jesus; who took 
away the sin of the world, and there will be life for you from 
this hour. 

Thank God, we do not require an education to teach us 
how to look. That little girl, thf,t little boy, only four years 
old, who cannot read, can look. When the father is coming 
home, the mother says to her little boy, " Look! look! look!" 
and the little child learns to look long before he is a year old. 
And that is the way to be saved. It is to look at tbe Lamb of 
God " who taketh away the sin of the world; " and there is 
life this moment for every one who is willing to look. 

Some men say, " I wish I knew how to be saved." Just 
take God at His word and trust His Son this very day — this 
very hour — this very moment. He will save you, if you will 
trust Him. I imagine I hear some one saying, " I do not feel 
the bite as much as I wish I did. I know I am a sinner, and 
all that; but I do not feel the bite enough." How much does 
God want you to feel it? 

When I was in Belfast I knew a doctor who had a friend, 
a leading surgeon there ; and he told me that the aurgeon's 
custom was, before performing any operation, to say to the 
patient, " Take a good look at the wound, and then fix your 
eyes on me; and do not take them off till I get through." I 
thought at the time that was a good illustration. Sinner, 
take a good look at your wound; and then fix your eyes 
on Christ, and do not take them off. It is better to look at 
the Remedy than at the wound. See what a poor wretched 
sinner you are; and then look at the Lamb of God who 
" taketh away the sin of the world." He died for the ungodly 
and the sinner. Say "I will take Him!" And may God 
help you to lift your eye to the Man on Calvary. And as the 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 37 

Israelites looked upon the serpent and were healed, bo may 
you look and live. 

After the battle of Pittsburgh Landing I was in a hospital 
at Murfreesbro.' In the middle of the night I was aroused and 
told that a man in one of the wards wanted to see me. I 
went to him and he called me "chaplain" — I was not the 
chaplain — and said he wanted me to help him die. And I 
said, " I would take you right up in my arms and carry you 
into the kingdom of God if I could; but I cannot do it: I 
cannot help you die!" And he said, "Who can?" I said, 
" The Lord Jesus Christ can — He came for that purpose." 
He shook his head, and said, "He cannot save me; I have 
sinned all my life." And I said, " But He came to save sin- 
ners." I thought of his mother in the north, and I -was sure 
that she was anxious that he should die in peace; so I re- 
solved I would stay with him. I prayed two or three times, 
and repeated all the promisee I could ; for it was evident that 
in a few hours he would be gone. I said I wanted to read 
him a conversation that Christ had with a man who was anx- 
ious about his soul. I turned to the third chapter of John. 
His eyeg were riveted on me; and when I came to the 14th 
and 15th verses — the passage before us — he caught up the 
words, " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up ; that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." 
He stopped me and said, "Is that there?" 1 said "Yes." 
He asked me to read it again ; and I did so. He leant his 
elbows on the cot and clasping his hands together, said, 
11 That's good; won't you read it again?" I read it the third 
time; and then went on with the rest of the chapter. When I 
had finished, his eyes were closed, his hands were folded, and 
there was a smile on his face. Oh, how it was lit up ! What 
a change had come over itl I saw his lips quivering, and 



38 THE WAY TO GOD. 

leaning over him I heard in a faint whisper, " As Moses lifted 
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of 
Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish, but have eternal life." He opened his eyea and said, 
"That's enough; don't read any more." He lingered a few 
hours, pillowing his head on those two verses ; and then went 
up in one of Christ's chariots, to take his seat in the kingdom 
of God. 

Christ said to Nicodemus : " Except a man be born again, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God." You may see many 
countries; but there is one country — the land of Beulah, 
which John Bunyan saw in vision — you shall never behold, 
unless you are born again — regenerated by Christ. You can 
look abroad and see many beautiful trees ; but the tree of life, 
you shall never behold, unless your eyes are made clear by 
faith in the Saviour. You may see the beautiful rivers of the 
earth — you may ride upon their bosoms ; but bear in mind 
that your eye will never rest upon the river which bursts out 
from the Throne of God and flows through the upper King- 
dom, unless you are born again. God has said it; and not- 
man. You will never see the kingdom of God except you arc 
born again. You may see the kings and lords of the earth; 
but the King of kings and Lord of lords you will never see 
except you are born again. When you are in London you 
may go to the Tower and see the crown of England, which is 
worth thousands of dollars, and is guarded there by soldiers; 
but bear in mind that your eye will never rest upon the crown 
of life except you are born again. 

You may hear the songs of Zion which are sung here ; but 
one song — that of Moses and the Lamb — the uncircumcised 
ear shall never hear; its melody will only gladden the ear of 
those who have been born again. You may look upon the 
beautiful mansions of earth, but bear in mind the man* 



THE GATEWAY INTO THE KINGDOM. 39 

eions which Christ has gone to prepare you shall never see 
unless you are born again. It is God who says it. You 
may see ten thousand beautiful things in this world; but 
the city that Abraham caught a glimpse of — and from that 
time became a pilgrim and sojourner — you shall never see un- 
less you are born again (Heb. xi. 8, 10 — 16). You may often 
be invited to marriage feasts here; kit you will never attend 
the marriage supper of the Lamb except you are born again. 
It is God who says it, dear friend. You may be looking on 
the face of your sainted mother to-night, and feel that she is 
praying for you ; but the time will come when you shall never 
see her more unless you are born again. 

The reader may be a young man or a young lady who has 
recent] v stood by the bedside of a dying mother ; and she may 
have said, " Be sure and meet me in heaven," and you made 
the promise. Ah ! you shall never see her more, except you 
are born again. I believe Jesus of Nazareth, sooner than 
those infidels who say you do not need to be born again. 
Parents, if you hope to see your children who have gone be- 
fore, you must be born of the Spirit. Possibly you are a 
father or a mother who has recently borne a loved one to the 
grave ; and how dark your home seems ! Never more will you 
see your child, unless you are born again. If you wish to be 
re-united to your loved one, you must be born again. I may 
be addressing a father or a mother who has a loved one up 
yonder. If you could hear that loved one's voice, it would 
say, " Come this way." Have you a sainted friend up yon- 
der? Young man or young lady, have you not a mother in 
the world of light? If you could hear her speak, would not 
she say, "Come this way, my son," — "Come this way, my 
daughter ?" If you would ever see her more you must be 
born again. 



40 THE WAY TO GOD. 



We all have an Elder Brother there. Nearly nineteen 
hundred years ago He orossed over, and from the heavenly 
shores He is calling you to heaven. Let us turn our backg 
upon the world. Let us give a deaf ear to the world. Let 
us look to Jesus on the Cross and be saved. Then we shall 
one day see the King u> His beauty, and we shall go no more 
out. 



THE TWO CLASSES. 41 



CHAPTER III. 

THE- TWO CLASSES. 

' Two men went up into the temple to pray." — Luke xvii. 10. 

I now want to speak of two classes : First, those who do 
riot feel their need of a Saviour who have not been convinced 
of sin by the Spirit; and Second, those who are convinced of 
sin and cry, " What must I do to be saved?" 

All inquirers can be ranged under two heads : they have 
either the spirit of the Pharisee, or the spirit of the publican, 
If a man having the spirit of the Pharisee comes into an 
after-meeting, I know of no better portion of Scripture to meet 
his case than Romans iii. 10: "As it is written, There is 
none righteous, no, not one : there is none that understandeth ; 
there is none that seeketh after God." Paul is here speaking 
of the natural man. "They are all gone out of the way, they 
are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth 
good, no, not one." And in the 17th verse and those which 
follow, we have " And the way of peace have they not known ; 
there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know what 
things soever the law saith, it saith to them wbo are under 
the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world 
may become guilty before God." 

Then observe the last clause of verse 22 : " For there is 
no difference ; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory 
of God." Not part of the human family — but all — "have 
sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Another verse 
which has been very much used to convict men of their gin is 



42 THE WAT TO GOD. 

1 John i. 8: " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 

I remember that on one occasion we were holding meetings 
in an eastern city of forty thousand inhabitants ; and a lady 
came and asked us to pray for her husband, whom she pur- 
posed bringing into the after meeting. I have traveled a good 
deal and met many pharisaical men ; but this man was so clad 
in self-righteousness that you could not get the point of the 
needle of conviction in anywhere. I said to his wife: "I 
am glad to see your faith; but we cannot get near him; he is 
the most self-righteous man I ever saw." She said: "You 
must ! My heart will break if these meetings end without his 
conversion." She persisted in bringing him ; and I got almost 
tired of the sight of him. 

But towards the close of our meetings of thirty days, he 
came up to me and put his trembling hand on my shoulder. 
The place in which the meetings were held was rather cold, 
and there was an adjoining room in which only the gas had 
been lighted; and he said to me, " Can't you come in here for 
afew minutes?" I thought that he was shaking from cold, - 
and I did not particularly wish to go where it was colder. But 
he said: "I am the worst man in the State of Vermont. I 
want you to pray for me." I thought he had committed a 
murder, or some other awful crime; and I asked: " Is there 
any one sin that particularly troubles you?" And he said: 
"My whole life has been a sin. I have been a conceited, self- 
righteous Pharisee. I want you to pray for me." He was 
under deep conviction. Man could not have produced this 
result; but the Spirit had. About two o'clock in the morning 
light broke in upon his soul : and he went up and down the 
business street of the city and told what God had done for 
him; and has been a most active Christian ever since. 



THE TWO CLASSES. 43 

There are four other passages in dealing with inquirers, 
which were used by Christ Himself. " Verily, verily, I say 
unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God." (John hi. 3.) 

In Luke xiii. 3, we read: "Except ye repent, ye shall all 
likewise perish. " 

In Matthew xviii. , when the disciples came to Jesus to 
know who was to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, 
we are told that He took a little child and set him in the midst 
and said, "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, 
and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom 
of heaven" (xviii. 1-3). 

There is another important "Except" in Matthew v. 20: 
"Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of 
the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the king- 
dom of heaven." 

A man must be made meet before he will want to go into 
the kingdom of God. I would rather go into the kingdom 
with the younger brother than stay outside with the elder. 
Heaven would be hell to such an one. An elder brother who 
could not rejoice at his younger brother's return would not be 
"fit" for the kingdom of God. It is a solemn thing to con- 
template; but the curtain drops and leaves him outside, and 
the younger brother within. To him the language of the 
Saviour under other circumstances seems appropriate : "Ver- 
ily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into 
the kingdom of God before you" (Matt. xxi. 31). 

A lady once came to me and wanted a favor for her daugh- 
ter. She said : " You must remember I do not sympathize 
with you in your doctrine." I asked: "What is your 
trouble?" She said : "I think your abuse of the elder brother 
is horrible. I think he is a noble character." I said that I 
was willing to hear tier defend him; but that it was a solemn 



44 THE WAY TO GOD. 



thing to take up such a position ; and that the elder brother 
needed to be converted as much as the younger. When peo- 
ple talk of being moral it is well to get them to take a good 
look at the old man pleading with his boy who would not 
go in. 

But we will pass on now to the other class with which we 
have to deal. It i3 composed of those who are convinced of 
sin and from whom the cry comes as from the Philippian 
jailer, "What must I do to be saved?" To those who utter 
this penitential cry there is no necessity to administer the law. 
It is well to bring them straight to the Scripture: "Believe 
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts 
xvi. 31). Many will meet you with a scowl and say, " I don't 
know what it is to believe ; and though it is the law of heaven 
that they must believe, in order to be saved — yet they ask for 
something besides that. We are to tell them what, and where, 
and how, to believe. 

In John hi. 35 and 36 we read : "The Father loveth the ' 
Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that be- 
lieveth on the Son hath everlasting life ; and he that believeth 
not the Son shall not see life ; but the wrath of God abidetbf 
on him." 

Now this looks reasonable. Man lost life by unbelief — by 
not believing God's word; and we got life back again by be- 
lieving — by taking God at His word. In other words we get 
up where Adam fell down. He stumbled and fell over the 
stone of unbelief; and we are lifted up and stand upright by 
believing. When people say they cannot believe, show them 
chapter and verse, and hold them right to this one thing : 
"Has God ever broken His promise for these six thousand 
years?" The devil and men have been trying all the time and 
have not succeeded in showing that He has broken a single 
promise; and there would be a jubilee in hell to-day if one word 



THE TWO CLASSES. 45 

that He has spoken could be broken. If a man says that he 
cannot believe it is well to press him on that one thing. 

I can believe God better to-day than I can my own heart. 
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately 
wicked : who can know it?" (Jer. xvii. 9). I can believe God 
better than I can myself. If you want to know the way 
of Life, believe that Jesus Christ is a personal Saviour; cut 
away from all doctrines and creeds, and come right to 
the heart of the Son of God. If you have been feeding on 
-dry doctrine there is not much growth on that kind of food. 
Doctrines are to the soul what the streets which lead to the 
house of a friend who has invited me to dinner are to the 
body. They will lead me there if I take the right one ; but if 
I remain in the streets my hunger will never be satisfied. 
Feeding on doctrines is like trying to live on dry husks ; and 
lean indeed must the soul remain which partakes not of the 
Bread sent down from heaven. 

Some ask : " How am I to get my heart warmed?" It is 
by believing. You do not get power to love and serve God 
until you believe. 

The apostle John says : " If we receive the witness of men, 
the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God 
which He hath testified of His Son. He that believeth on the 
Son of God hath the witness in himself : he that believeth 
not God hath made Him a liar; because he believeth not the 
record that God gave of His Son. And this is the record, 
that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His 
Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not 
the Son of God hath not life " (1 John v. 9). 

Human affairs would come to a standstill if we did not 
"take the testimony of men. How should we get on in the 
ordinary intercourse of life, and how would commerce get on, 
if we disregarded men's testimony? Things social and com- 



46 TEE WAT TO GOD. 



mercial would come to a dead-lock within forty-eight hours ! 
This is the drift of the apostle's argument here. " If we re- 
ceive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater." God 
has borne witness to Jesus Christ. And if man can believe 
his fellow men who are frequently telling untruths and whom 
we are constantly finding unfaithful, why should we not take 
God at His word and believe His testimony? 

Faith is a belief in testimony. It is not a leap in the dark, 
as some tell us. That would be no faith at all. God does 
not ask any man to believe without giving him something to 
believe. You might as well ask a man to see without eyes ; to 
hear without ears ; and to walk without feet — as to bid him 
believe without giving him something to believe. 

When I started for California I procured a guide-book. 
This told me, that after leavmq the State of Illinois, I should 
cross the Mississippi, and then the Missouri; get into Ne- 
braska; then over the Rocky Mountains to the Mormon set- 
tlement at Salt Lake City, and by tne way of the Sierra 
Nevada into San Francisco. I found the guide book all right as 
I went along; and I should have been a miserable sceptic if, 
having proved it to be correct three-fourths of the way, I had 
said that I would not believe it for the remainder of the 
journey. 

Suppose a man, in directing me to the Post Office, gives 
me ten landmarks; and that, in my progress there, I find nine 
of them to be as he told me ; I should have good reason to 
believe that I was coming to the Post Office. 

And if, by believing, I get a new life, and a hope, a peace, 
a ;oy, and a rest to my soul, that I never had before ; if I get 
self-control, and find that I have a power to resist evil and • to 
do good, I have pretty good proof that I am in the right road 
to the " city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker 
if God." And if things have taken place, and are now taking 1 



THE TWO CLASSES. 47 

place, as recorded in God's "Word, I have good reason to con- 
clude that what yet remains will be fulfilled. And yet people 
talk of doubting. There can be no true faith where there is 
fear. Faith is to take God at His word, unconditionally. 
There cannot be true peace where there is fear. "Perfect 
love casteth out fear." How wretohod a wife would be if she 
doubted her husband I and how miserable a mother would feel 
if after her boy had gone away from home she had reason, 
from his neglect, to question that son's devotion! True love 
never has a doubt. 

There are three things indispensable to faith — knowledge, 
assent, and appropriation. 

We must know God. " And this is life eternal, that they 
might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Cbrist whom 
Thou hast sent" (John xvii. 3). Then we must not only 
give our assent to what we know; but we must lay hold of the 
truth. If a man simply give his assent to the plan of salva- 
tion, it will not save him : he must accept Christ as his 
Saviour. He must receive and appropriate Him. 

Some say they cannot tell how a man's life can be affected 
by his belief. But let some one cry out that some building in 
which we happen to be sitting, is on fire; and see how soon 
we should act on our belief and get out. We are all the time 
influenced by what we believe. We cannot help it. And let 
a man believe the record that God has given of Christ, and it 
will very quickly affect his whole life. 

Take John v. 24. There is enough truth in that one verse 
for every soul to rest upon for salvation. It does not admit 
the shadow of a doubt. " Verily, verily" — which means 
truly, truly — " I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and 
believeth on Him that sent Me, hath — hath — everlasting life, 
and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from 
death unto life." 



48 THE WAY TO GOD. 

Now if a person really hears the word of Jesus and believes 
with the heart on God who sent the Son to be the Saviour of 
the world, and lays hold of and appropriates this great salva- 
tion, there is no fear of judgment. He will not be looking 
forward with dread to the Great White Throne; for we read ,; 
in 1 John iv. 17: " Herein is our love made perfect, that we j 
may have boldness in the day of judgment : because as He is,«j 
bo are we in this world." 

If we believe, there is for us no condemnation, no judg- 
ment. That is behind us, and passed; and we shall have J 
boldness in the day of judgment. 

I remember reading of a man who was on trial for his life, i 
He had friends with influence; and they procured a pardon I 
for him from the king on condition that he was to go through 1 
the trial, and be condemned. He went into court with the 1 
pardon in his pocket. The feeling ran very high against him, 1 
and the judge said that the court was shocked that he was so | 
much unconcerned. But, when the sentence was pronounced, | 
he pulled out the pardon, presented it, and walked out a free $ 
man. He has been pardoned; and so have we. Then let I 
death come, we have nought to fear. All the grave-diggers in | 
the world cannot dig a grave large enough and deep enough to | 
hold eternal life ; all the coffin-makers in the world cannot I 
make a coffin large enough and tight enough to hold eternal | 
life. Death has had his hand on Christ once, but never! 
Again. 

Jesus said : " I am the Resurrection, and the Life: he that 
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and 
whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die " (John 
xi. 25, 26). And in the Apocalypse we read that the risen 
Saviour said to John, " I am He that liveth, and was dead; 
and, behold, I am alive for evermore " (Eev i. 18). Death 
cannot touch Him again. 



TRB TWO CLASSES. 



"We get life by believing. In fact we get more than Adam- 
lost; for the redeemed child of God is heir to a richer and 
more glorious inheritance than Adam in Paradise could ever 
have conceived; yea, and that inheritance endures forever — 
it is inalienable. 

I would much rather have my life hid with Christ in God 
than have lived in Paradise; for Adam might have sinned and 
fallen after being there ten thousand years. But the believer 
is safer, if these things become real to him. Let us make 
them a fact, and not a fiction. God has said it; and that is 
enough. Let us trust Him even where we cannot trace Him. 
Let the same confidence animate us that was in little Maggie 
as related in the following simple but touching incident which 
I read in the Bible Treasury: — 

"I had been absent from home for some days, and was 
wondering, as I again draw near the homestead, if my little 
Maggie, just able to sit alone, would remember me. To test 
her memory, I stationed myself where I could see her, but 
could not be seen by her, and called her name in the familiar 
tone, ' Maggie!' She dropped her playthings, glanced around 
the room, and then looked down upon her toys. Again I re. 
peated her name, « Maggie!' when she once more surveyed the 
room; but, not seeing her fathers face, 6Le looked very sad, 
and slowly resumed her employment. Once more I called, 
'Maggie!' when, dropping her playthings, and bursting into 
tears, she stretched out her arms in the direction wbence the 
sound proceeded, knowing that, though she could not aee him, 
her father must be there, for she knew his voice." 

Now, we have power to see and to hear, and we have 
power to believe. It is all folly for the inquirers to take the 
ground that they cannot believe. They can,, if they will. But 
the trouble with most people is that they have connected feel- 
ing with believing. Now Feeling has nothing whatever to do 



50 THE WAY TO GOD. 



with Believing. The Bible does not say — He that feeleth, or 
he that feeleth and believeth, hath everlasting life. Nothing 
of the kind. I cannot control my feelings. If I could, I 
should never feel ill, or have a headache or toothache. I 
I should be well all the while. But I can believe God; and if 
we get our feet on that rock, let doubts and fears come and 
the waves surge around us, the anchor will hold. 

Some people are all the time looking at their faith. Faith 
is the hand that takes the blessing. I heard this illustration 
of a beggar. Suppose you were to meet a man in the street 
whom you had known for years as being accustomed to beg; 
and you offered him some money, and he were to say to you : 
"I thank you; I don't want your money: I am not a beggar." 
"How is that?" "Last night a man put a thousand dollars 
into my hands." "He did! How did you know it was good 
money?" "I took it to the bank and deposited it and have 
got a bank book." "How did you "get this gift?" "I asked 
for alms; and after the gentleman talked with me he took out 
a thousand dollars in money and put it in my hand." "How 
do you know that he put it in the right hand?" "What do I 
care about which hand ; so that I have got the money. " Many 
people are always thinking whether the faith by which they 
Jay hold of Christ is the right kind — but what is far more 
essential is to see that we have the right kind of Christ. 

Faith is the eye of the soul; and who would ever think of 
taking out an eye to see if it were the right kind so long as 
the sight was perfect? It is not my taste, but it is what I 
taste, that satisfies my appetite. So, dear friends, it is taking 
God at His Word that is the means of our salvation. The 
truth cannot be made too simple. 

There is a man living in the city of New York who has a 
home on the Hudson Biver. His daughter and her family 
went to spend the winter with him ; and in the course of the 



THE TWO CLASSES.. 51 

season the scarlet fever broke out. One little girl was put in 
quarantine, to be kept separate from the rest. Every morning 
the old grandfather used to go and bid his grandchild, "Good- 
bye," before going to his business. On one of these occasions 
the little thing took the old man by the hand, and, leading 
him to a corner of the room, -without saying a word she 
pointed to the floor where she had arranged some small 
crackers so they would spell out, "Grandpa, I want a box of 
paints." He said nothing. On his return home he hung up 
his overcoat and went to the room as usual: when his little 
grandchild, without looking to see if her wish had been com- 
plied with, took him into the same corner, where he saw 
spelled out in the same way, "Grandpa, I thank you for the 
box of paints." The old man would not have missed gratify- 
ing the child for anything. That was faith. 

Faith is taking God at His Word; and those people who 
want some token are always getting into trouble. We want to 
come to this: God says it — let us believe it. 

But some say, Faith is the gift of God. So is the air; but 
you have to breathe it. So is bread; but you have to eat it. 
So is water; but you have to drink it. Some are wanting a 
miraculous kind of feeling. That is not faith. "Faith 
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom. 
x. 17). That is whence faith comes. It is not for me to sit 
down and wait for faith to come stealing over me with a 
strange sensation ; but it is for me to take God at His Word. 
And you cannot believe, unless you have something to believe. 
So take the Word as it is written, and appropriate it, and lay 
hold of it. 

In John vi. 47, 48 we read: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life. I am that 
Bread of life." There is the bread right at hand. Partake 
of it. I might have thousands of loaves within my home, and 



52 THE WAY TO GOD. 



as many hungry men in waiting. They might assent to the 
fact that the bread was there ; but unless they each took a loaf 
and commenced eating, their hunger would not be satisfied. 
So Christ is the Bread of heaven ; and as the body feeds on 
natural food, so the soul must feed on Christ. 

If a drowning" man sees a rope thrown out to rescue him 
he must lay hold of it; and in order to do so he must let go 
everything else. If a man is sick he must take the medicine 
— for simply looking at it will not cure him. A knowl- 
edge of Christ will not help the inquirer, unless he believes in 
Him, and takes hold of Him, as his only hope. The bitten 
Israelites might have believed that the serpent was lifted up ; 
but unless they had looked they would not have lived (Num. 
xxi. 6-9). 

I believe that a certain line of steamers will convey me 
across the ocean, because I have tried it : but this will not 
help another man who may want to go, unless he acts upon my 
knowledge. So a knowledge of Christ does not help us unless 
we act upon it. That is what it is to believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ. It is to act on what we believe. As a man 
steps on board a steamer to .cross the Atlantic, so we must 
take Christ and make a commitment of our souls to Him; 
and He has promised to keep all who put their trust in Him, 
To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, i% simply to take Him at 
His word. 



WORDS OF COUNSEL. 53 



CHAPTER IV. 
WORDS OF COUNSEL. 

"A bruised reed shall He not break."— Isaiah xlii. 3 ; Matt. xii. 20. 

It is dangerous for those -who are seeking salvation to lean 
upon the experience of other people. Many are waiting for a 
repetition of the experience of their grandfather or grand- 
mother. I had a friend who was converted in a field ; and he 
thinks the whole town ought to go down into that meadow 
and be converted. Another was converted under a bridge ; 
and he thinks that if any enquirer were to go there he would 
find the Lord. The best thing for the anxious is to go right 
to the Word of God. If there are any persons in the world to 
whom the Word ought to be very precious it is those who are 
asking how to be saved. 

For instance a man may say, " I have no strength." Let 
him turn to Eomans v. 6. "For when we were yet without 
strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." It is be- 
cause we have no strength that we need Christ. He has come 
to give strength to the weak. 

Another may say, "I cannot see." Christ says, "I am the 
Light of the world" (John viii. 12). He came, not only to 
give light, but "to open the blind eyes" (lea. xlii. 7). 

Another may say, "I do not think a man can be saved all 
at once. " A person holding that view was in the Enquiry- 
room one night; and I drew his attention to Romans vi. 28. 
"The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, 
througn Jesus Christ our Lord." How long does it take to 
accept a ght? There must be a moment when you have it 



54 THE WAT TO GOD. 

not, and another when you have it — a moment when it is 
another's, and the next when it is yours. It does not take six 
months to get eternal life. It may however in some cases be 
like the mustard seed, very small at the commencement. 
Some people are converted so gradually that, like the morn- 
ing light, it is impossible to tell when the dawn began ; while, 
with others, it is like the flashing of a meteor, and the truth 
bursts upon them suddenly. 

I would not go across the street to prove when I was con- 
verted; but what is important is for me to know that I really 
have been. 

It may be that a child has been so carefully trained that it 
is impossible to tell when the new birth began ; but there must 
have been a moment when the change took pi ice, and when he 
became a partaker of the Divine nature. 

Some people do not believe in sudden co jversion. But I 
will challenge any one to show a conversion in the New Tes- 
tament that was not instantaneous. "As Jf sub passed by He 
saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the receipt of custom, 
and said unto him, 'Follow Me' : and he a rose and followed 
Him" (Matt. ix. 9). Nothing could be more sudden than 
that. 

Zaccheus, the publican, sought to see Jesus; and because 
he was little of stature he climbed up a tree. When Jesus 
came to the place He looked up and saw him, and said, 
" Zaccheus, make haste, and come down" (Luke xix. 5). His 
conversion must have taken place somewhere between the 
branch and the ground. We are told that he received Jesus 
joyfully, and said, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give 
to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by 
false accusation, I restore him fourfold" (Luke xix. 8). Very 
few in these days could say that in proof of their conversion. 



I 



WORDS OF COUNSEL. 55 

The whole house of Cornelius was converted suddenly; for 
as Peter preached Christ to him and his company the Holy 
Ghost fell on them, and they were baptized. (Acts x.) 

On the day of Pentecost three thousand gladly received the 
Word. They were not only converted, but they were baptized 
the same day. (Acts ii.) 

And when Philip talked to the eunuch, as they went on 
their way, the eunuch said to Philip, "See, here is water: 
what doth hinder me to be baptized?" Nothing hindered. 
And Philip said, "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou 
mayest." And they both went down into the water; and the 
man of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethi- 
opians, was baptized, and went on his way rejoicing. (Acts 
viii. 26' — 38.) You will find all through Scripture that con- 
versions were sudden and instantaneous. 

A man has been in the habit of stealing money from his 
employer. Suppose he has taken $1,000 in twelve months; 
should we tell him to take $500 the next year, and less the 
next year, and the next, until in five years the sum taken 
would be only $50? That would be upon the same principle 
as gradual conversion. 

If such a person were brought before the court and par- 
doned, because he could not change his mode of life all a*- 
once, it would be considered a very strange proceeding. 

But the Bible says, " Let him that stole, steal no more " 
(Eph. iv. 28). It is "right about face!" Suppose a person 
is in the habit of cursing one hundred times a day : should 
we advise him not to utter more than ninety oaths the following 
day, and eighty the next day; 60 that in the course of time he 
would get rid of the habit? The Saviour says, " Swear not 
at all." (Matt. v. 34.) 

Suppose another man is in the habit of getting drunk and 
heating his wife twice a month; if he only did so once » 



S6 THE WAY TO GOB. 



month, and then only once in six months, that would be, upon 
the same ground, as reasonable as gradual conversion. Sup- 
pose Ananias had been sent to Paul, when he was on his way 
to Damascus breathing out threatenings and slaughter against 
the disciples, and casting them into prison, to tell him not to 
kill so many as he intended ; and to let enmity die out of his 
heart gradually, but not all at once. Suppose he had been 
told that it would not do to stop breathing out threatening s 
and slaughter, and to commence preaching Christ all at once, 
because the philosophers would say that the change was so 
sudden it would not hold out; this would be. the same kind of 
reasoning as is used by those who do not believe in instanta- 
neous conversion. 

Then another class say that they are afraid that they will 
not hold out. This is a numerous and very hopeful class. I 
like to see a man distrust himself. It is a good thing to get 
such to look to God, and to remember that it is not he who 
holds God, but that it is God who holds him. Some want to 
get hold of Christ ; but the thing is to get Christ to take hold 
of you in answer to prayer. Let such read Psalm cxxi. ; ''I 
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my 
help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven 
and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : He that 
keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel 
shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; 
the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall 
not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord 
shall preserve thee from all evil : He shall preserve thy soul. 
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from 
this time forth, and even for evermore." 

Some one calls that the traveler's psalm. It is a beautiful 
psalm for those of us who are pilgrims through this world; 
and one with which we should be well acquainted. 



WORDS OP COUNSEL. 57 

God can do what He has done before. He kept Joseph in 
Egypt; Moses before Pharaoh; Daniel in Babylon; and en- 
abled Elijah to stand before Ahab in that dark day. And I 
am so thankful that these I have mentioned were men of like 
passions with ourselves. It was God who made them so 
great. What man wants is to look to God. Eeal true faith 
is man's weakness leaning on God's strength. When man has 
no strength, if he leans on God he becomes powerful. The 
trouble is that we have too much strength and confidence in 
ourselves. 

Again in Hebrews vi. 17, 18 : " Wherein God, willing more 
abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immuta- 
bility of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath that by two im- 
mutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we 
might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to 
lay hold upon the hope set before us : which hope we have as 
an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which 
entereth into that within the vail ; whither the Forerunner is 
for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after 
the order of Melchisedec." 

Now these are precious verses to those who are afraid of 
falling, who fear that they will not hold out. It is God's work 
to hold. It is the Shepherd's business to keep the sheep- 
Who ever heard of the sheep going to bring back the shep- 
herd? People have an idea that they have to keep themselves 
and Christ too. It is a false idea. It is the work of the 
Shepherd to look after them, and to take care of those who 
trust Him. And He has promised to do it. I once heard' 
that when a sea captain was dying he said, " Glory to 
God; the anchor holds." He trusted in Christ. His anchor 
had taken hold of the solid rock. An Irishman said, on one 
occasion, that "he trembled; but the Rock never did." W* 
want to get sure footing. 



58 THE WAY TO GOD. 



In 2 Timothy i. 12 Paul says : "I know whom I have 
believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which 
I have committed unto Him against that day." That was 
Paul's persuasion. 

During the late war of the rebellion, one of the chaplains, 
going through the hospitals, came to a man who was dying. 
Finding that he was a Christian, he asked to what persuasion 
he belonged, and was told " Paul's persuasion." " Is he a 
Methodist?" he asked; for the Methodists all claim Paul. 
"No." "Is he a Presbyterian?" for the Presbyterians lay 
special claim to Paul. "No," was the answer. "Does he 
belong to the Episcopal Church?" for all the Episcopalian 
brethren contend that they have a claim to the Chief Apostle. 
" No," he was not an Episcopalian. " Then, to what per- 
suasion does he belong?" " I am persuaded that He is able 
to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that 
day." It is a grand persuasion; and it gave the dying soldier 
rest in a dying hour. 

Let those who fear that they will not hold out turn to the 
24th verse of the Epistle of Jude: "Now unto Him that is 
able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless be- 
fore the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." 

Then look at Isaiah xli. 10: "Fear thou not; for I am 
with thee : be not dismayed ; for I am thy God : I will 
strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee 
with the right hand of My righteousness." 

Then see verse 13 : " For I the Lord thy God will hold 
thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee." 

Now if God has got hold of my right hand in His, cannot 
He hold me and keep me? Has not God the power to keep? 
The great God who made heaven and earth can keep a poor 
sinner like you and like me if we trust Him. To refrain from 
feeling confidence in God for fear of falling — would be like a 



WORDS, OF COUXSEL. 59 

man who refused a pardon, for fear that he should get into 
prison again; or a drowning man who refused to be rescued, 
for fear of falling into the water again. 

Many men look forth at the Christian life, and fear that 
they will not have sufficient strength to hold out to the end. 
They forget the promise that "as thy days, thy strength" (Deut. 
xxxiii. 25). It reminds me of the pendulum to the clock which 
grew disheartened at the thought of having to travel so many 
thousands of miles ; but when it reflected that the distance 
was to be accomplished by "tick, tick, tick," it took fresh 
courage to go its daily journey. So it is the special privilege 
of the Christian to commit himself to the keeping of his 
heavenly Father and to trust Him day by day. It is a com- 
forting thing to know that the Lord will not begin the good 
Work without also finishing it. 

There are two kinds of sceptics — one class with honest 
difficulties; and another class who delight only in discus- 
sion. I used to think that this latter class would always be a 
thorn in my flesh ; but they do not prick me now. I expect 
to find them right along the journey. Men of this stamp used 
to nang around Christ to entangle Him in His talk. They 
come into our meetings to hold a discussion. To all such I 
would commend Paul's advice to Timothy: "But foolish and 
unlearned questions avoid; knowing that they do gender 
strifes." (2 Tim. ii. 23.) Unlearned questions! Many 
young converts make a woful mistake. They think they are 
to defend the whole Bible. I knew very little of the Bible 
when I was first converted ; and I thought that I had to defend 
it from beginning to end against all comers ; but a Boston in- 
fidel got hold of me, floored all my arguments at once, and 
discouraged me. But I have got over that now. There are 
many things in the "Word of God that I do not profess to 
understand. 



60 THE WAY TO GOD. 

"When I am asked what I do with them, I say, "I don't 
do anything." 

"How do you explain them?" "I don't explain them," 

"What do you do with them?" "Why, I believe them." 

And when I am told, "I would not believe anything that I 
do not understand," I simply reply that I do. 

There are many things which were dark and mysterious 
five years ago, on which I have since had a flood of light; and 
I expect to be finding out something fresh about God through- 
out eternity. I make a point of not discussing disputed pass- 
ages of Scripture. An old divine has said that some people, 
if they want to eat fish, commence by picking the bones. I 
leave such things till I have light on them. I am not bound 
to explain what I do not comprehend. "The secret things 
belong unto the Lord our God : but those things which are 
revealed belong unto us, and to our children, for ever" (Deut. 
xxix. 29) ; and these I take, and eat, and feed upon, in order 
to get spiritual strength. 

Then there is a little Bound advice in Titus iii. 9. "But 
avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and 
strivings about the law ; for they are unprofitable and vain." 

But now here comes an honest sceptic. With him I would 
deal as tenderly as a mother with her sick child. I have no 
sympathy with those people who, because a man is sceptical, 
cast him off and will have nothing to do with him. 

I was in an Inquiry-meeting, some time ago, and I handed 
over to a Christian lady, whom I had known some time, one 
who was sceptical. On looking round soon after I noticed the 
enquirer marching out of the hall. I asked, "Why have you 
let her go?" "Oh, she is a sceptic!" was the reply. I ran to 
the door and got her to stop, and -introduced her to . another 
Christian worker who spent over an hour in conversation and 
prayer with her. He visited her and her husband ; and, in 



WORDS OF CO UNSEL. 



the course of a week, that intelligent lady cast off her scepti- 
cism and came out an active Christian. It took time, tact, 
and prayer; but if a person of this class is honest we ought to 
deal with such an one as the Master would have us.. 

Here are a few passages for doubting enquirers : 

"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doc- 
trine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" 
(John vii. 17). If a man is not willing to do the will of (rod 
he will not know the doctrine. There is no class of sceptics 
who are ignorant of the fact that God desires them to give up 
ein ; and if a man is willing to turn from sin and take the 
light and thank Him for what He does give, and not expect to 
have light on the whole Bible all at once, he will get more 
light day by day; make progress step by step; and be led 
right out of darkness into the clear light of heaven. 

In Daniel xii. 10 we are told: "Many shall be purified, 
and made white, and tried: but the wicked shall do wickedly; 
and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall 
understand." 

Now God will never reveal His secrets to His enemies. 
Never! And if a man persists in living in sin he will not 
know the doctrines of God. 

"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and 
He will show them His covenant " (Ps. xxv. 14). 

And in John xv. 15 we read: "Henceforth I call you not 
servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth : 
but I have called you friends ; for all things that I have heard 
of my Father I have made known unto you." When you be- 
come friends of Christ you will know His secrets. The Lord 
said, "Shall I hide from Abraham the things which I do?" 
(Gen. xviii. 17). 

Now those who resemble God are the most likely to under- 
itand God, If a man is not willing to turn from sin he will 



62 THE WAY TO GOD. 

not know God's will, nor will God reveal His aecrets to him. 
But if a man is willing to turn from sin he will be surprised 
to see how the light will come in ! 

I remember one night when the Bible was the driest 
and darkest book in the universe to me. The next day it 
became entirely different. I thought I had the key to it. I 
had been born of the Spirit. But before I knew anything of 
the mind of God I had to give up my sin. I believe God 
meets every soul on the spot of self surrender; and when they 
are willing to let Him guide and lead. The trouble with 
many sceptics is their self-conceit. They know more than the 
Almighty ! and they do not come in a teachable spirit. But 
the moment a man comes in a receptive spirit he is blessed; 
for "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that givefch 
to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be 
given him " (James i. 6). 






A DIVINE SAVIOUR. ' 63 



CHAPTER V. 
A DIVINE SAVIOUR. 

" Thou art the Cheist, the Son of the living God." 
(Matthew xvi. 1. John vi. 69.) 

We meet with a certain class of Enquirers who do not be- 
lieve in the Divinity of Christ. There are many passages that 
will give light on this subject. 

In 1 Corinthians xv. 47, we are told: "The first man is 
of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from 
heaven." 

In 1 John v. 20 : "We know that the Son of God is come, 
and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him 
that is true ; and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son 
Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." 

Again in John xvii. 3: "And this is life eternal, that they 
might know Thee, the only true God; and Jesus Christ, whom 
Thou hast 6ent." 

And then, in Mark xiv. 60: "The high priest stood up in 
the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest Thou nothing? 
What is it which these witness against thee? But He held 
His peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest 
asked Him, and said unto Him, Art Thou the Christ, the Son 
of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am : and ye shall see the 
Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in 
the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, 
and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have 
heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all con- 
demned Him to be guilty of death." 



64 THE WAY TO GOD. 

Now what brought me to believe in the Divinity of Christ, 
was this : I did not know where to place Christ, or what to 
do with Him, if He were not divine. When I was a boy If 
thought that He was a good man like Moses, Joseph, or Abra- 
ham. I even thought that He was the best man who had ever 
lived on the earth. But I found that Christ had a higher 
claim. He claimed to be God-Man, to be divine; to have 
oome from heaven. He said : "Before Abraham was I am " I 
(John viii. 58). I could not understand this; and I was 
driven to the conclusion— and I challenge any candid man to 
deny the inference, or meet the argument — that Jesus Christ 
is either an impostor or deceiver, or He is the God-Man — God 
manifest in the flesh. And for these reasons. The first com- 
mandment is, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me ""' 
(Exod. xx. 2). Look at the millions throughout Christendom 
who worship Jesus Christ as God. If Christ be not God this 
is idolatry. We are all guilty of breaking the first command- 
ment if Jesus Christ were mere man — if He were a created 
being, and not what He claims to be. 

Some people, who do not admit His divinity, say that He 
was the best man who ever lived ; but if He were not Divine-,' 
for that very reason He ought not to be reckoned a good man, for* 
He laid claim to an honor and dignity to which these veryj. 
people declare He had no right or title. That would rank Him' 
as a deceiver. 

Others say that He thought He was divine, but that He 
was deceived. As if Jesus Christ were carried away by a de-' 
lusion and deception, and thought that He was more than He 
was ! I could not conceive of a lower idea of Jesus Christ than ■• 
that. This would not only make Him out an impostor; but 
that He was out of His mind, and that He did not know who. 
He was, or where He came from. Now if Jesus Christ was 






A DIVINE SAVIOUR. . 65 

not what He claimed to be, the Saviour of the world ; and if 
He did not come from heaven, He was a gross deceiver. 

But how can any one read the life of Jesus Christ and 
make Him out a deceiver? A man has generally some motive 
for being an impostor. What was Christ's motive? He knew 
that the course He was pursuing would conduct Him to the 
cross; that His name would be cast out as vile; and that 
many of His followers would be called upon to lay down their 
lives for His sake. Nearly every one or the apostles were 
martyrs ; and they were considered as off scouring and refuse 
in the midst of the people. If a man is an impostor, he has a 
motive at the back of his hypocrisy. But what was Christ's 
object? The record is that "He went about doing good." 
This is not the work of an impostor. Do not let the enemy of 
your soul deceive you. 

In John v. 21 we read : "For as the Father raiseth up the 
dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom 
He will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath commit- 
ted all judgment unto the Son : that all men should honor 
the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoureth 
not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent 
Him." 

Now notice : by the Jewish law if a man were a blas- 
phemer he was to be put to death ; and supposing Christ to be 
merely human if this be not blasphemy I do not know where 
you will find it. "He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth 
not the Father." That is downright blasphemy if Christ be 
not divine. If Moses, or Elijah, or Elisha, or any other 
mortal had said, "You must honour me as you honor God;" 
and had put himself on a level with God, it would have been 
downright blasphemy. 

The Jews put Christ to death because they said that He 
was not what He claimed to be. It was on that testimony He 



66 TEE WAT TO GOD. 

was put under oath. The high priest said : "I adjure Thee 
by the living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou be the 
Christ, the Son of God " (Matt. xxvi. 63). And when the 
Jews came round Him and said, " How long dost Thou make 
us to doubt? If Thou be the Christ tell us plainly." Jesus 
said, "I and My Father are one." Then the Jews took up 
stones again to stone Him. (John x. 24 — 33.) They said 
they did not want to hear more, for that was blasphemy. It 
was for declaring Himself to be the Son of God that He was 
condemned and put to death. (Matt. xxvi. 68 — 66). 

Now if Jesus Christ were mere man the Jews did right, 
according to their law, in putting Him to death. In Leviticus 
xxiv. 16, we read: "And he that blasphemeth the name of 
the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congre- 
gation shall certainly stone him : as well the stranger, as he 
that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of 
the Lord, shall be put to death." 

This law obliged them to put to death every one who blas- 
phemed. It was making the statement that He was divine 
that cost Him His life ; and by the Mosaic law He ought to 
have suffered the death penalty. In John xvi. 15, Christ says, 
" All things that the Father hath are Mine : therefore said I, 
that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you." How 
could He be merely a good man and use language as that? 

No doubt has ever entered my mind on the point since I 
was converted. 

A notorious sinner was once asked how he could prove the 
divinity of Christ. His answer was, "Why, He has saved me; 
and that is a pretty good proof, is it not?" 

An infidel on one occasion said to me, " I have been study- 
ing the life of John the Baptist, Mr. Moody. Why don't you 
preach him? He was a greater character than Christ. You 
ivoulcNio Epgreater work." 1 said to him, "My friend, ws 



A DIVINE SAVIOUR. 67 

preach John the Baptist ; and I will follow you and preach 
Christ: and we will see who will do the most good." "You 
will do the most good," he said, "because the people are so 
superstitious." Ah! John was beheaded; and his disciples 
begged his body and buried it : but Christ has risen from the 
dead; He has "ascended on high; He has led captivity cap- 
tive; and received gifts for men." Ps. Ixviii. 18.) 

Our Christ lives. Many people have not found out that 
Christ has risen from the grave. They worship a dead 
Saviour, iike Mary, who said, "They have taken away my 
Lord; and I know not where they have laid Him." (John 
xx. 13.) That is the trouble with those who doubt the divinity 
of our Lord. 

Then look at Matthew xviii. 20. "Where two or three are 
gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of 
them." "There am I." Well now, if He is a mere man, how 
can He be there? All these are strong passages. 

Again in Matthew xxviii. 18. "And Jesus came and spake 
unto them, saying, " All power is given unto Me in heaven and 
in earth." Could He be a mere man and talk in that way? 
"All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth!" 

Then again in Matthew xxviii. 20. " Teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." If 
He were mere man, how could He be with us? Yet He says : 
" I am with you alway, even unto +hs end of the world!" 

Then again in Mark h. 7. " Why doth this Man thus 
speak blasphemies? who- can forgive sins but God only? And 
immediately when Jesus perceived in His Spirit that they rea- 
soned within themselves, He said unto them, Why reason ye 
these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say 
to the sicK of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to 
eay, Arise and take up thy bed and walk?" 



THE WAY TO GOD. 



Some men will meet you and say, "Did not Elisha also 
raise the dead?" Notice that in the rare instances in which 
men have raised the dead, they did it by the power of God. 
They called on God to do it. But when Christ was on earth 
He did not call upon the Father to bring the dead to life, 
When He went to the house of Jairus He said, "Damsel, / 
say unto thee, Arise." (Mark v. 41.) 

He had power to impart life. When they were carrying 
the young man out of Nain He had compassion on the wid- 
owed mother and came and touched the bier and said, "Young 
man, I say unto thee, Arise." (Luke vii. 14.) 

He spake ; and the dead arose. 

And when He raised Lazarus He called with a loud voice, 
" Lazarus, come forth!" (John xi. 43.) And Lazarus heard, 
and came forth. 

Some one has said, It was a good thing that Lazarus was 
mentioned by name, or all the dead within the sound of 
Christ's voice would immediately have risen. 

In John v. 25, Jesus says : " Verily, verily, 1 *ay unto 
you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." 
What blasphemy would this have been, had He not been 
divine ! The proof is overwhelming, if you will but examine 
the Word of God. 

And then another thing— no good man except Jesus Christ 
has ever allowed anybody to worship him. When this was 
done He never rebuked, the worshiper. In John ix. 38, we 
read that when the blind man was found by Christ he said, 
♦'Lord, I believe. And he worshiped Him." The Lord did 
not rebuke him. 

Then again, Eevelation xxii. 6, runs thus: " And he said 
Unto me, These things are faithful and true; and the Lord 
God of the holy prophets sent His angel to show onto His 



A DIVINE SAVIOUR. 69 

servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I 
come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the 
prophecy of this book. And I John saw these things and 
heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to 
worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these 
things. Then saith He unto me, See thou do it not; for I am 
thy fellow -servant and of thy brethren the prophets, and of 
them which keep the sayings of this booK; worship God." 

We see here that even that angel would not allow John to 
worship him. Even an angel from heaven ! And if Gabriel 
came down here from the presence of God it would be a sin 
to worship him, or any seraph, or any cherub, or Michael, or 
any archangel. 

-' Worship God!" And if Jesus Chist were not God mani- 
fest in the flesh we are guilty of idolatry in worshiping Him. 
In Matthew xiv. 33, we read : " Then they that were in the 
ship came and worshiped Him, saying, Of a truth Thou art the 
Son of God." He did not rebuke them. 

And in Matthew viii. 2, we also read: "And, behold, 
there came a leper and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou 
wilt, Thou canst make me clean." 

In Matthew xv. 25 : " Then came she, and worshiped Him, 
saying, Lord, help me!" 

There are many other passages; but I give these as suffi- 
cient in my opinion to prove beyond any doubt the Divinity 
*f our Lord. 

in the 14th chapter of Acts we are told the heathen of 
Lystra came with garlands and would have done sacrifice to 
Paul and Barnabas because they had cured an impotent man; 
but the evangelists rent their clothes and told these Lystrane 
that they were but men, and not to be worshipped; as if i^ 
were a grea + sin. And if Jesus Christ is a mere man, we are 
all guilty o) a great sin in worshipping Him. 



70 THE WAY TO GOD. 

But if He is, as we believe, the only-begotten and well- 
beloved Son of God, let us yield to His claims upon us; let us 
rest on His all- atoning work, and go forth to serve Him all the 
days of our life. 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. 71 



CHAPTER VI. 
REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. . 

" God commandeth all men everywhere to repent. "—Acts xvii. 30. 

Repentance is one of the fundamental doctrines of the 
Bible. Yet I believe it is one of those truths that many 
people little understand at the present day. There are more 
people to-day in the mist and darkness about Repentance, 
Regeneration, the Atonement, and such-like fundamental 
truths, than perhaps on any other doctrines. Yet from our 
earliest years we have heard about them. If I were to ask 
for a definition of Repentance, a great many would give a very 
strange and false idea of it. 

A man is not prepared to believe or to receive the Gospel, 
unless he is ready to repent of his sins and turn from them. 
Until John the Baptist met Christ, he had but one text, "Re- 
pent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. iii. 2). 
But if he had continued to say this, and had stopped there 
without pointing the people to Christ the Lamb of God, he 
would not have accomplished muoh. 

"When Christ came, He took up the same wilderness cry, 
"Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. iv. 
17). And when our Lord sent out His disciples, it was with 
the same message, "that men should repent" (Mark vi. 12), 
After He had been glorified, and when the Holy Ghost came 
down, we find Peter on the day of Pentecost raising the same 
cry, "Repent!" It was this preaching — Repent, and believe 
the Gospel — that wrought such marvellous results then. 
(Acts ii. 88 — 47). And we find that, when Paul went to 



72 THE WAT TO GOD. 



Athens, he uttered the same cry, " Now God commandeth all 
men, everywhere, to repent" (Acts xvii. 30). 

Before I speak of what Kepentance is, let me briefly say 
what it is not. Kepentance is not fear. Many people have 
confounded the two. They think they have to he alarmed 
and terrified; and they are waiting for some kind of fear to 
come down upon them. But multitudes become alarmed who 
do not really repent. You have heard of men at sea during a 
terrible storm. Perhaps they have been very profane men; 
but when the danger same they suddenly grew quiet, and be- 
gan to cry to God for mercy. Yet you would not say they 
repented. When the storm had passed away, they went on 
swearing the same as before. You might think that the king 
of Egypt repented when God sent the terrible plagues upon 
him and his land. But it was not repentance at all. The 
moment God's hand was removed Pharaoh's heart was harder 
than ever. He did not turn from a single sin ; he was the 
same man. So that there was no true repentance there. 

Often, when death comes into a family, it looks as if the ■ 
event would be sanctified to the conversion of all who are in 
the house. Yet in six months' time all may be forgotten. 
Some who read this have perhaps passed through that experi- 
ence. When God's hand was heavy upon them it looked as if 
they were going to repent; but the trial has been removed — 
and lo and heboid, the impression has all gone. 

Then again, Bepentance is not feeling. ■ I find a great 
many people are waiting for a certain kind of feeling to come. 
They would like to turn to God; but think they cannot do it 
until this feeling comes. When I was in Baltimore I used to 
preach every Sunday in the Penitentiary to nine hundred con- 
victs. There was hardly a man there who did not feel miser- 
able enough : they had plenty of feeling. For the first week 
or ten days of their imprisonment many of them cried half 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. 73 

the time. Yet, when they were released, most of them would 
go right back to .their old ways. The truth was, that they felt 
very bad because they had got caught; that was all. So you 
have seen a man in the time of trial show a good deal of feel- 
ing : but very often it is only because he has got into trouble ; 
not because he has committed sin, or because his conscience 
tells him he has done evil in the sight of God. It seems as if 
the trial were going to result in true repentance ; but the feel- 
ing too often passes away. 

Once again, Eepentance is not fasting and afflicting the body. 
A man may fast for weeks and months and years, and yet not 
repent of one sin. Neither is it remorse. Judas had terrible 
remorse — enough to make him go and hang himself; but that 
was not repentance. I believe if he had gone to his Lord, 
fallen on his face, and confessed his sin, he would have been 
forgiven. Instead of this he went to the priests, and then put 
an end to his life. A man may do all sorts of penance — but 
there is no true repentance in that. Put that down in your 
mind. You cannot meet the claims of God by offering the 
fruit of your body for the sin of your soul. Away with such 
a delusion ! 

Eepentance is not conviction of sin. That may sound 
strange to some. I have seen men under such deep conviction 
of sin that they could not sleep at night; they could not enjoy 
a single meal. They went on for months in this state; and 
yet they were not converted ; they did not truly repent. Do 
not confound conviction of sin with Eepentance. 

Neither is praying — Eepentance. That too may sound 
strange. Many people, when they become anxious about 
their soul's salvation, say, "I will pray, and read the Bible;" 
and they think that will bring about the desired effect. 
But it will not do it. You may read the Bible and cry to God 



74 THE WAY TO GOD. 



a great deal, and yet never repent. Many people cry loudly to 
God, and yet do not repent. 

Another thing : it is not breaking off some one sin. A great 
many people make that mistake. A man who has been a 
drunkard signs the pledge, and stops drinking. Breaking off 
one sin is not Eepentance. Forsaking one vice is like break- 
ing off one limb of a tree, when the whole tree has to come 
down. A profane man stops swearing; very good: but if he 
does not break off from every sin it is not Eepentance — it is not 
the work of God in the soul. When God works He hews 
down the whole tree. He wants to have a man turn from 
every sin. Supposing I am in a vessel out at sea, and I find 
the ship leaks in three or four places. I may go and stop up 
one hole; yet down goes the vessel. Or suppose I am 
wounded in three or four places, and I get a remedy for one 
wound : if the other two or three wounds are neglected, my 
life will soon be gone. True Eepentance is not merely break- 
ing off this or that particular sin. 

Well then, you will ask, what is Eepentance? I will give 
you a good definition: it is "right about face!" In the Irish 
language the word "Eepentance" means even more than 
"right about face !" It implies that a man who has been walk- 
ing in one direction has not only faced about, but is actually 
walking in an exactly contrary direction. "Turn ye, turn ye; 
for why will ye die?" A man may have little feeling or much 
feeling; but if he do not turn away from sin, God will not 
have mercy on him. Eepentance has also been described as 
"a change of mind." For instance, there is the parable told 
by Christ: "A certain man had two sons; and he came to the 
first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He 
answered and said, I will not" (Matt. xxi. 28, 29). After he 
had said "I will not" he thought -over it, and changed his 
mind. Perhaps he may have said to himself, "I did not speak 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. 



75 



very respectfully to my father. He asked me to go and work, 
and I told him I would not go. I think I was wrong." But 
suppose he had only said this, and still had not gone, he would 
not have repented. He was not only convinced that he was 
wrong; but he went off into the fields,' hoeing, or mowing or 
whatever it was. That is Christ's definition of repentance. If 
a man says, "By the grace of God I will forsake my sin, and 
do His will, " that is Bepentance — a turning right about. 

Some one has said, man is born with his face turned away 
from God. When he truly repents he is turned right around 
towards God; he leaves his old life. 

Can a man at once repent? Certainly he can. It does 
not take a long while to turn around. It does not take 
a man six months to change his mind. There was a vessel 
that went down some time ago on the Newfoundland 
coast. As she was bearing towards the shore, there was a 
moment when the captain could have given orders to reverse 
the engines and turn back. If the engines had been reversed 
then, the ship would have been saved. But there was a 
moment when it was too late. So there is a moment, I 
believe, in every man's life when he can halt and say, "By the 
grace of God I will go no further towards death and ruin. I 
repent of my sins and turn from them." You may say you 
have not got feeling enough; but if you are convinced that you 
are on the wrong road, turn right about, and say, "I will no 
longer goon in the way of rebellion and sin as I have done." 

Just then, when you are willing to turn towards God, sal- 
vation may be yours. 

I find that every case of conversion recorded in the Bible 
was instantaneous. Repentance and faith came very suddenly. 
The moment a man made up his mind, God gave him the 
power. God does not ask any man to do what he has not the 
power to do. He would not " command all men every when© 



76 THE WAY TO GOD. 



to repent" (Acts xvii. 80) if they were not able to do so. Man 
has no one to blame but himself if he does not repent and 
believe the Gospel. One of the leading ministers of the Gos- 
pel in Ohio wrote me a letter some time ago describing his 
conversion ; it very forcibly illustrates this point of instanta- 
neous decision. He said : 

"I was nineteen years old, and was reading law with a 
Christian lawyer in Vermont. One afternoon when he was 
away from home, his good wife said to me as I came into the 
house, 'I want you to go to class-meeting with me to-night 
and become a Christian, so that you can conduct family wor- 
ship while my husband is away.' 'Well, I'll do it,' I said, 
without any thought. When I came into the house again she 
asked me if I was honest in what I had said. I replied, 'Yes, 
bo far as going to meeting with you is concerned; that is only 
courteous.' 

"I went with her to the class-meeting, as I had often done 
before. About a dozen persons were present in a little school- 
house. The leader had spoken to all in the room but myself 
and two others. He was speaking to the person next me, 
when the thought occurred to me : he will ask me if I have 
anything to say. I said to myself; I have decided to be a 
Christian sometime; why not begin now? In less time than 
a minute after these thoughts had passed through my mind he 
said, speaking to me familiarly — for he knew me very well — 
'Brother Charles, have you anything to say? I replied, with 
perfect coolness, 'Yes, sir. I have just decided, within the last 
thirty seconds, that I will begin a Christian life, and would 
like to have you pray for me.' 

"My coolness staggered him; I think he almost doubted 
my sincerity. He said very little, but passed on and spoke 
to the other two. After a few general remarks, he turned to 
me and said, 'Brother Charles, will you close the meeting 



. 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. 77 

with prayer?' He knew I had never prayed in puhlic. Up to 
this moment I had no feeling. It was purely a business tran- 
saction. My first thought was: I cannot pray, and I will ask 
him to excuse me. My second was : I have said I will begin 
a Christian lif e ; and this is a part of it. So I said, 'Let us 
pray.' And somewhere between the time I started to kneel 
and the time my knees struck the floor the Lord converted my 
soul. 

"The first words I said were, * Glory to God!' What I 
e&id after that I do not know, and it does not matter, for my 
soul was too full to say much but ' Glory!' From that hour 
the devil has never dared to challenge my conversion. To 
Christ be all the praise." 

Many people are waiting, they cannot exactly tell for what, 
but for some sort of miraculous feeling to come stealing over 
them — some mysterious kind of faith. I was speaking to a 
man some years ago, and he always had one answer to give 
me. For five years I tried to win him to Christ, and every 
year he said, "It has not ' struck me ' yet." "Man, what do 
you mean? "What has not struck you?" "Well, " he said, 
"I am not going to become a Christian until it strikes me ; and 
it has not struck me yet. I do not see it in the way you see 
it." "But don't you know you are a sinner?" "Yes, I know 
I am a sinner." "Well, don't you know that God wants to 
have mercy on you — that there is forgiveness with God? He 
wants you to repent and come to Him." "Yes, I know that; 
but — it has not struck me yet." He always fell back on that. 
Poor man ! be went down to his grave in a state of indecision. 
Sixty long years God gave him to repent ; and all he had to 
Bay at the end of those years was that it "had not struck him 
yet." 

Is any reader waiting for some strange feeling — you dc 
not know what? Nowhere in the Bible is a man told to wait; 
fl-od ii commanding you now to repent. 



78 THE WAY TO GOD. 

Do you think God can forgive a man when he does not 
want to be forgiven? "Would he be happy if God forgave him 
in this state of mind? Why, if a man went into the kingdom 
of God without repentance, heaven would be hell to him. 
Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. If your 
boy has done wrong, and will not repent, you cannot forgive 
him. You would be doing him an injustice. Suppose he 
goes to your desk, and steals $10, and squanders it. "When 
you come home your servant tells you what your boy has done. 
You ask if it is true, and he denies it. But at last you have 
certain proof. Even when he finds he cannot deny it any 
longer, he will not confess the sin, but says he will do it again 
the first chance he gets. "Would you say to him, "Well, 1 
forgive you," and leave the matter there? No! Yet people 
say that God is going to save all men, whether they repent or 
not — drunkards, thieves, harlots, whoremongers, it makes no 
difference. "God is so merciful," they say. Dear friend, do 
not be deceived by the god of this world. Where there is true 
repentance and a turning from sin unto God, He will meet 
and bless you ; but Re never blesses until there is sincere re- 
pentance. 

David made a woful mistake in this respect with his rebel- 
lious son, Absalom. He could not have done his son a greater 
injustice than to forgive him when his heart was unchanged.' 
There could be no true reconcilliation between them when 
there was no repentance. But God does not make these mis- 
takes. David got into trouble on account of his error of judg- 
ment. His son soon drove his father from the throne. 

Speaking on repentance, Dr. Brooks, of St. Louis, well 
remarks: "Bepentance, strictly speaking, means a 'change 
of mind or purpose;' consequently it is the judgment which 
the sinner pronounces upon himself, in view of the love of 
God displayed in the death of Christ, connected with the 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION, 1% 

— — ■ ' <! 

abandonment of all confidence in himself and with trust in 
the only Saviour of sinners. Saving repentance and saving 
faith always go together; and you need not be worried about 
repentance if you will believe." 

"Some people are no sure that they have ' repented enough.' 
If you mean by this that you must repent in order to incline 
God to be merciful to you, the sooner you give over such re- 
pentance the better. God is already merciful, as He has fully 
shown at the Cross of Calvary; and it is a grievous dishonor 
to His heart of love if you think that your tears and anguish 
will move Him, 'not knowing that the goodness of God 
leadeth thee to repentance.' It is not your badness, therefore, 
but His goodness that leads to repentance; hence the true 
way to repent is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, « who 
was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our 
justification.' " 

Another thing. If there is true repentance it will bring 
forth fruit. If we have done wrong to any one we should 
never ask God to forgive us, until we are willing to make res- 
titution. If I have done any man a great injustice and caD 
make it good, I need not ask God to forgive me until I am 
willing to make it good. Suppose I have taken something 
that does not belong to me. I have no right to expect forgive- 
ness until I make restitution. 

I remember preaching in one of our large cities, when a 
fine-looking man came up to me at the close. He was in great 
distress of mind. "The fact is," he said, "I am a defaulter. 
I have taken money that belonged to my employers. How can 
I become a Christian without restoring it?" " Have you got 
the money?" He told me he had not got it all. He had taken 
about $1,500, and he still had about $900. He said., " Could 
I not take that money and go into business, and make enough 
to pay them back?" I told him that was a delusion of Satan; 



80 THE WAY TO GOD. 

c ' ; 

that he could not expect to prosper on stolen money ; that he 
should restore all he had, and go and ask hia employers to 
have mercy upon him and forgive him. " But they will put 
me in prison," he said: "cannot you give me any help?" 
"No, you must restore the money hefore you can expect to get 
any help from God." 'It is pretty hard," he said. " Yes. it 
is hard; but the great mistake was in doing the wrong at 
first." 

His burden became so heavy that it got to be insupportable, 
fie handed me the money — 950 dollars and some cents — and 
asked me to take it back to his employers. The next even- 
ing the two employers and myself met in a side room of 
the church. I laid the money down, and informed them it 
was from one of their employes. I told them the story, and 
said he wanted mercy from them, not justice. The tears 
trickled down the cheeks of these two men, and they said, 
" Forgive him! Yes, we will be glad to forgive him." I went 
down stairs and brought him up. After he had confessed his 
guilt and been forgiven, we all got down on our knees and had, 
a blessed prayer-meeting. God met us and blessed us there. 

There was a friend of mine who some time ago had come 
to Christ and wished to consecrate himself and his wealth to 
God. He had formerly had transactions with the govern- 
ment, and had taken advantage of them. This thing came up ' 
when he was converted, and his conscience troubled him. He 
said, " I want to consecrate my wealth, but it seems as if God 
will not take it." He had a terrible struggle; his conscience 
kept rising up and smiting him. At last he drew a check 
for $ 1,500 and sent it to the United States Treasury. He 
told me he received such a blessing when he had done it. 
That was bringing forth "fruits meet for repentance. " I be- 
lieve a great many men are crying to God for light; and they 
are not getting it because they are not honeifc. 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. 81 

I was once preaching, and a man came to me who was only 
thirty-two years old, but whose hair was very grey. He said, 
"I want you to notice that my hair is grey, and I am only 
thirty-two years old. For twelve years I have carried a great 
burden." "Well," I said, "what is it?" He looked around as 
if afraid some one would hear him. "Well," he answered, 
"my father died and left my mother with the county news- 
paper, and left her only that : that was all she had. After he 
died the paper began to waste away; and I saw my mother 
was fast sinking into a state of need. The building and the 
paper were insured for a thousand dollars, and when I was 
twenty years old I set fire to the building, and obtained the 
thousand dollars, and gave it to my mother. For twelve years 
that sin has been haunting me. I have tried to drown it by in- 
dulgence in pleasure and sin ; I have cursed God ; I have gone 
into infidelity; I have tried to make out that the Bible is not 
true ; I have done everything I could : but all these years I 
have been tormented." I said, "There is a way out of that." 
He inquired "How?" I said, "Make restitution. Let us sit 
down and calculate the interest, and then you pay the Com- 
pany the money." It would have done you good to see that 
man's face light up when he found there was mercy for him. 
He said he would be glad to pay back the money and interest 
if he could only be forgiven. 

There are men to-day who are in darkness and bondage 
because they are not willing to turn from their sins and con- 
fess them; and I do not know how a man can hope to be for- 
given if he is not willing to confess his sins. 

Bear in mind that now is the only day of mercy you will 
ever have. You can repent now, and have the awful record 
blotted out. God waits to forgive you; He is seeking to bring 
you to Himself. But I think the Bible teaches clearly that 
there is no repentance after this life. There are some who tell 



m THE WAY TO GOD. 



you of the possibility of repentance in the grave ; but I do not 
find that in Scripture. I have looked my Bible over very care- 
fully, and I cannot find that a man will have another oppor- 
tunity of being saved. 

Why should he ask for any more time ? You have time 
enough to repent now. You can turn from your sins this 
moment if you will. God says: "I have no pleasure in the 
death of him that dieth; wherefore turn, and live ye" (Ezek. 
xviii. 32). 

Christ said, He "came not to call the righteous, but sinners 
to repentance." Are you a sinner? Then the call to repent 
is addressed to you. Take your place in the dust at the 
Saviour's feet, and acknowledge your guilt. Say, like the pub- 
lican of old, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" and see how 
quickly He will pardon and bless you. He will even justify 
you and reckon you as righteous, by virtue of the righteous- 
ness of Him who bore your sins in His own body on the 
Cross. 

There are some perhaps who think themselves righteous; 
and that, therefore, there is no need for them to repent, and be- 
lieve the Gospel. They are like the Pharisee in the parable, 
who thanked God that he was not as other men — "extortion- 
ers, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican;" and who 
went on to say, "I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all I 
possess." "What is the judgment about such self-righteous 
persons? "I tell you this man [the poor, contrite, repenting 
publican] went down to his house justified rather than the 
other" (Luke xviii. 11 — 14). "There is none righteous; no, 
not one." "All have sinned, and come short of the glory oi 
God " (Eom. iii. 10, 23). Let no one say he does not need to 
repent. Let each one take his true place — that of a sinner; 
then God will lift him up to the place of forgiveness and justi- 



! 



REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION, 83 

fication. "Whosoever exalteth himself shall he abased; and 
he that humbleth himself shall be exalted " (Luke xiv. 11). 

Wherever God sees true repentance in the heart He meets 
that soul. 

I was in Colorado, preaching the gospel some time ago, and 
I heard something that touched my heart very much. The 
governor of the State was passing through the prison, and in 
one cell he found a boy who had his window full of flowers, 
that seemed to have been watched with very tender care. The 
governor looked at the prisoner, and then at the flowers, and 
asked whose they were, "These are my flowers," said the 
poor convict. "Are you fond of flowers?" "Yes, sir." "How 
long have you been here?" He told him so many years: he 
was in for a long sentence. The governor was surprised to 
find him so fond of the flowers, and he said, "Can you tell'me 
why you like these flowers so much?" With much emotion 
he replied, "While my mother was alive she thought a good 
deal of flowers; and when I came here I thought if I had these 
they would remind me of mother. " The governor was so 
pleased that he said, "Well, young man, if you think so much 
of your mother I think you will appreciate your liberty," and 
he pardoned him then and there. 

When God finds that beautiful flower of true repentance 
springing up in a man's heart, then salvation comes to thai 
man. 



84 THE WAY TO GOD. 



CHAPTER VII. 
ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 

" These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son 
of God; that ye may knew that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on 
the name of the Son of God." 

(1 JOHN v. 13.) 

There are two classes who ought not to have Assurance. 
First: those who are in the Church, but who are not con- 
verted, having never been born of the Spirit. Second: those 
not willing to do God's will; who are not ready to take 
the place that God has mapped out for them, but want to 
fill some other place. 

Some one will ask " Have all God's people Assurance?" 
No; I think a good many of God's dear people have no Assur- 
ance; but it is the privilege of every child of God to have 
beyond doubt a knowledge of his own salvation. No man is 
fit for God's service who is filled with doubts. If a man is 
not sure of his own salvation, how can he help any one else 
into the kingdom of God ? If I seem in danger of drowning 
and do not know whether I shall ever reach the shore, I can- 
not assist another. I must first get on the solid rock myself ; 
and then I can lend my brother a helping hand. If being 
myself blind I were to tell another blind man how to get sight, 
he might reply, "First get healed yourself; and then you can 
tell me." I recently met with a young man who was a Chris- 
tian : but he had not attained to victory over sin. He was in 
terrible darkness. Such an one is not fit to work for God, 
because he has besetting sins; and he has not the victory 
over his doubts, because he has not the victory over his sins. 



* 



ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 85 

None will have time or heart to work for God, who are 
not assured as to their own salvation. They have as much 
as they can attend to; and heing themselves burdened with 
doubts, they cannot help others to carry their burdens. 
There is no rest, joy, or peace— no liberty, nor power — where 
doubts and uncertainty exist. 

Now it seems as if there are three wiles of Satan against 
which we ought to be on our guard. In the first place he 
moves all his kingdom to keep us away from Christ; then 
he devotes himself to get us into " Doubting Castle:" but if 
we have, in spite of him, a clear ringing witness for the Son 
of God, he will do all he can to blacken our characters and 
belie our testimony. 

Some seem to think that it is presumption not to have 
doubts; but doubt is very dishonoring to God. If any one 
were to say that they* had known a person for thirty years 
and yet doubted him, it would not be very creditable; and 
when we have known God for ten, twenty or thirty years 
does it not reflect on His veracity to doubt Him. 

Could Paul and the early Christians and martyrs have 
gone through what they did if they had been filled with 
doubts, and had not known whether they were going to 
heaven or to perdition after they had been burned at the 
stake? They must have had Assurance. 

Mr. Spurgeon says: " I never heard of a stork that when 
it met with a fir tree demurred as to its right to build its 
nest there; and I never heard of a coney yet that questioned 
whether it had a permit to run into the rock. Why, these 
creatures would soon perish if they were always doubting 
and fearing as to whether they had a right to use providen- 
tial provisions. 

" The stork says to himself, 'Ah, here is a fir tree:' he 
consults with his mate, 'Will this do for the nest in which we 



86 THE WAY TO GOD. 



may rear our young?' 'Aye,' saya she; and they gather the 
materials, and arrange them. There is never any deliber- 
ation, 'May we build here?' but they bring their sticks and 
make their nest. 

"The wild goat on the crag does not say, 'Have I a right 
here?' No, he must be somewhere: and there is a crag which 
exactly suits him; and he springs upon it. 

"Yet, though these dumb creatures know the provision of 
their God, the sinner does not recognize the provision of his 
Saviour. He quibbles and questions, 'May I?' and 'I am 
afraid it is not for me;' and 'I think it cannot be meant for 
me;' and 'I am afraid it is too good to be true.' 

"And yet nobody ever said to the stork, 'Whosoever buildeth 
on this fir tree shall never have his nest pulled down.' No 
inspired word has ever said to the coney, 'Whosoever runs 
into this rock cleft shall never be driven out of it. " If it had. 
been so it would make assurance doubly sure. 

"And yet here is Christ provided for sinners, just the sort 
of a Saviour sinners need ; and the encouragement is added, 
'Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out;' 'Who- 
soever will, let him take'the water of life freely.' " 

Now let us come to the Word. John tells us in his Gospel 
what Christ did for us on earth. In his Epistle He tells us 
what He is doing for us in heaven as our Advocate. In his 
Gospel there are only two chapters in which the word "believe" 
does not occur. With these two exceptions, every chapter in 
John is "Believe! Believe!! Believe!!!" He tells us in xx. 
31, "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesua 
is the Christ, the son of God, and that, believing, ye might 
have life through His name. That is the purpose for which he 
wrote the Gospel — "that we might believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God: and that, believing, we might have 
life through His name" (John xx. 31). 






ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 67 

Turn to 1 John v. 1 3, he there tells us why he wrote this 
Epistle: "These things have I written unto you that believe on 
the name of the Son of God." Notice to whom he writes it' 
"You that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye 
may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe 
on the name of the Son of God." There are only five short 
.chapters in this first Epistle, and the word "know" occurs over 
forty times. It is "Know! Know!! KNOW!!!" The Key to 
it is Know ! And all through the Epistle there rings out th« 
refrain — "that we might know that we have eternal life." 

I went twelve hundred miles down the Mississippi in the 
spring some years ago; and every evening, just as the sun 
went down, you might have seen men, and sometimes women, 
riding up to the banks of the river on either side on mules or 
horses, and sometimes coming on foot, for the purpose of 
lighting up the Government lights ; and all down that mighty 
river there were landmarks -which guided the pilots in their 
dangerous navigation. Now God has given us lights or land- 
marks to tell us whether we are His children or not ; and what 
we need to do is to examine the tokens He has given us. 

In the third chapter of John's first Epistle there are five 
things worth knowing. 

In the fifth verse we read the first : "And ye know that 
He was manifiested to take away oax sins; and in Him 
is no sin." Not what I have done, but what HE has 
done. Has He failed in His mission? Is He not able to 
do what He came for? Did ever any heaven-sent man fail 
yet? and could God's own Son fail? He was manifested to 

TAKE AWAY OUR SINS. 

Again, in the nineteenth verse, the second thing worth 
knowing: "And hereby ice know that we are of the truth, and 
shall assure our hearts before Him. " We know that we are of 
the truth. And if the truth make us free, we shall be free 



THE WAY TO GOD. 



indeed. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be 
free indeed." (John viii. 36.) 

The third thing worth knowing is in the fourteenth verse, 
" We knrnv that we have passed from death unto life, because 
we love the brethren." The natural man does not like godly 
people, nor does he care to be in their company. "He that 
loveth not his brother abideth in death." He has no spiritual 
life. 

The fourth thing worth knowing we find in verse twenty- 
four: "And he that keepeth His commandments dwelleth in 
Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth 
in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us. We can tell 
what kind of Spirit we have if we possess the Spirit of Christ — 
a Christ-like spirit — not the same in degree, but the same in 
kind. If I am meek, gentle, and forgiving; if I have a spirit 
filled with peace and joy; if I am long-suffering and gentle, 
like the Son of God — that is a test : and in that way we are to 
tell whether we have eternal life or not. 

The fifth thing worth knowing, and the best of all, is 
"Beloved, now." Notice the word "Now." It does not say 
when you come to die. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God; 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, 
when He shall appear, w© shall be like Him; for we shall see 
Him as He is" (v. 2). 

But some will say, "Well, I believe all that; but then I 
have sinned since I became a Christian." Is there a man or 
a woman on the face of the earth who has not sinned since 
becoming a Christian? Not one! There never has been, and 
never will be, a soul on this earth who has not sinned, or who 
will not sin, at some time of their Christian experience. But 
God has made provision for believers' sins. We are not to 
make provision for them; but God has. Bear that in mind. 



ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 89 

Turn to 1 John ii. 1: "My little children, these things 
write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we 
have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." 
He is here writing to the righteous. "If any man sin, we" — 
John put himself in — "we have an Advocate with the Father, 
Jesus Christ the righteous. " What an Advocate ! He attends 
to our interests at the very best place — the throne of God. He 
'said, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for 
you that I go away" (John xvi. 7). He went away to become 
our High Priest, and also our Advocate. He has had some 
hard cases to plead; but he has never lost one: and if you 
entrust your immortal interests to Him, He will "present you 
faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy" 
(Jude 24). 

The past sins of Christians are all forgiven as soon as they 
are confessed ; and they are never to be mentioned. That is a 
question wbich is not to be opened up again. If our sins 
have been put away, that is the end of them. They are not 
to be remembered ; and God will not mention them any more. 
This is very plain. Suppose I have a son who, while I am 
from home, does wrong. When I go home he throws his 
arms around my neck and says, "Papa, I did what you told 
me not to do. I am very sorry. Do forgive me." I say: 
"Yes, my son," and kiss him. He wipes away his tears, and 
goes off rejoicing. 

But the next day he says : ''Papa, I wish you would for- 
give me for the wrong I did yesterday." I should say: "Why, 
my son, that thing is settled; and I don't want it mentioned 
again." "But I wish you would forgive me: it would help me 
to hear you say, 'I forgive you.' " Would that be honoring 
me? Would it not grieve me to have my boy doubt me? But 
to gratify him I 6ay again, "I forgive you, my son." 



90 THE WAY TO GOD. 

And if, the next day, he were again to bring up that old 
ein, and ask forgiveness, would not that grieve me to the 
heart? And so, my dear reader, if God has forgiven us, never 
let us mention the past. Let us forget those things which are 
behind, and reach forth unto .those which are before, and 
press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God 
in Christ Jesus. Let the sins of the past go; for "If we con- 
fess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John i. 9). 

And let me say that this principle is recognized in courts of 
justice. A case came up in the courts of a country — I won't 
say where — in which a man had had trouble with his wife; 
but he forgave her, and then afterwards brought her into 
court. And, when it was known that he had forgiven her, the 
judge said that thething was settled. The judge recognized 
the soundness of the principle, that if a sin were once forgiven 
there was an end of it. And do you think the Judge of all the 
earth will forgive you and me, and open the question again? 
Our sins are gone for time and eternity, if God forgives: and 
what we have to do is to confess and forsake our sins. 

Again in 2 Corinthians xiii. 5: "Examine yourselves 
whether ye be in the faith ; prove your own selves. Know ye 
not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye 
be reprobates ?" Now examine yourselves. Try your religion. 
Put it to the test. Can you forgive an enemy? That is a 
good way to know if you are a child of God. Can you forgive 
an injury, or take an affront, as Christ did? Can you be 
censured for doing well, and not murmur? Can you be mis- 
judged and misrepresented, and yet keep a Christ-like spirit? 

Another good test is to read Galatians v., and notice the 
fruits of the Spirit; and see if you have them. - "The fruit of 
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, good- 
ness faith, meekness,, temperance: against such there is no 



ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 91 

law." If I have the fruits of the Spirit I must have the Spirit. 
I could not have the fruits without the Spirit any more than 
there could be an orange without the tree. And Christ says • 
"Ye shall know them by their fruits;" "for the tree is known 
by his fruits." Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good. 
The only way to get the fruit is to have the Spirit. That is 
the way to examine ourselves whether we are the children of 
God. 

Then there is another very striking passage. In Eomans 
viii. 9, Paul says: "Now, if any man have not the Spirit of 
Christ, he is none of His." That ought to settle the question, 
even though one may have gone through all the external forms 
that are considered necessary by some to constitute a member 
of a Church. Bead Paul's life, and put yours alongside of it. 
If your life resembles his, it is a proof that you are born again 
— that you are a new creature in Christ Jesus. 

But although you may be born again, it will require time 
to become a full-grown Christian. Justification is instantane- 
ous; but sanctification is a life-work. We are to grow in wis- 
dom. Peter says : " Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. iii. 18); and in 
the first chapter of his Second Epistle, "Add to yourfaifii vir- 
tue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowledge temperance ; 
and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to 
godliness brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kindness char- 
ity. For if these things be in you and abound they make you 
that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge 
of our Lord Jesus Christ." So that we are to add grace to 
grace. A tree may be perfect in its first year of growth ; but 
it does not attain its maturity. So with the Christian: he 
may be a true child of God, but not a matured Christian. The 
eighth of Eomans is very important, and we should be very 
familiar with it. In the fourteenth verse the apostle sayi : 






92 THE WAY TO GOD. 

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons 
of God." Just as the soldier is led by his captain, the pupil 
by his teacher, or the traveller by his guide; so the Holy 
Spirit will be the guide of every true child of God. 

Then let me call your attention to another fact. All 
Paul's teaching in nearly every Epistle rings out the doctrine 
of assurance. He says in 2 Corinthians v. 1: "For we know 
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens." He had a title to the mansions above, and 
he says — I know it. He was not living in uncertainty. He 
said: "I have a desire to depart and be with Christ " (Phil. 
i. 23) ; and if he had been uncertain he would not have said 
that. Then in Colossians iii. 4, he says: "When Christ, who 
is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in 
glory." I am told that Dr. Watts' tombstone bears this same' 
passage of Scripture. There is no doubt there. 

Then turn to Colossians i. 12: "Giving thanks unto the 
Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inher- 
itance of the saints in light ; who hath delivered us from the 
power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of 
His dear Son." 

Three haths : "hath made us meet;" "hath delivered us;" 
and "hath translated us." It does not say that He is going t<? 
make us meet; that He is going to deliver; that He is going 
to translate. 

Then again in verse 14th: "In whom we have redemp- 
tion through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." We 
are either forgiven or we are not, we should not give ourselves 
any rest until we get into the kingdom of God; nor until we 
can each look up and say, "I know that if my earthly house of 
this tabernacle were dissolved, I have a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. v. 1). 



ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 93 

Look at Bomans viii. 32: "He that spared not His own 
Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with 
Him also freely give us all things?" If He gave us His Son, 
will He not give us the certainty that He is ours. I have 
heard this illustration. There was a man who owed $10,- 
000, and would have been made a bankrupt, but a friend came 
forward and paid the sum. It was found afterwards that he 
owed a few dollars more ; but he did not for a moment enter- 
tain a doubt that, as his friend had paid the larger amount, he 
would also pay the smaller. And we have high warrant for 
saying that if God has given us His Son He will with Him 
also freely give us all things ; and if we want to realize our sal- 
vation beyond controversy He will not leave us in darkness. 

Again in the 38d verse: "Who shall lay anything to the 
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he 
that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is 
risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also 
maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the 
love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or 
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 
For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are ac- 
counted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things 
we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For 
I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord." 

That has the right ring in it. There is Assurance for you. 
"I Know." Do you think that the God who has justified me 
will condemn me ? That is quite an absurdity. God is going 
to save us so that neither men, angels, nor devils, can bring any 
charge against us or Him. He will have the work complete. 



THE WAY TO GOD. 



Job lived in a darker day than we do ; but we read in Job 
xix. 25: "I know that my Kedeemer liveth, and that He shall 
stand in the latter day upon the earth." 

The same confidence breathes through Paul's last words to 
Timothy: "For the which cause I also suffer these things: 
nevertheless I am not ashamed ; for I know whom I have be- I 
lieved, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I 
have committed unto Him against that day." It is not a 
matter of doubt, but of knowledge. "I know." "I am per- 
suaded." The word "Hope," is not used in the Scripture to 
express doubt. It is used in regard to the second coming of 
Christ, or to the resurrection of the body. We do not say that — 
we "hope " we are Christians. I do not say that I "hope " I 
am an American, or that I "hope " I am a married man. 
These are settled things. I may say that I "hope " to go back 
to my home, or I hope to attend such a meeting. I do not 
say that I "hope " to come to this country, for I am here. And 
so, if we are born of God we know it; and He will not leave us - 
in darkness if we search the Scriptures. 

Christ taught this doctrine to His seventy disciples when 
they returned elated with their success, saying, "Lord, even 
the devils are subject unto us through Thy name." The Lord 
seemed to check them, and said that He would give them 
something to rejoice in. " Notwithstanding in this rejoice 
not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoicj 
because your names are written in heaven." (Luke x. 20.) 

It is the privilege of every one of us to know, beyond a 
a doubt, that our salvation is sure. Then we ean work for 
others. But if we are doubtful of our own salvation, we are 
not fit for the service of God. 

Another passage is John v. 24 : "Verily, verily I say unto 
you : He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that 
•ent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into 'judg- 



ASSURANCE OF SALTATION. 



merit""* (the new translation has it so), "but is passed from 
death unto life." 

Some people say that you never can tell till you are before 
the great white throne of Judgment whether you are saved 01 
not. Why, my dear friend, if your life is hid with Christ in 
God, you are not coming into judgment for your sins. We 
may come into judgment for reward. This is clearly taught 
where the lord reckoned with the servant to whom five talents 
had been given, and who brought other five talents saying, 
"Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents; behold, I have 
gained beside them five talents more. His lord said unto him, 
Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been 
faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many 
things; enter thou into the joy [of thy lord." (Matt. xxv. 
20, 21.) We shall be judged for our stewardship. That is 
one thing; but salvation — eternal life — is another. 

Will God demand payment twice of the debt which Christ 
has paid for us? If Christ bear my 6ins in His own body on 
the tree, am I to answer for them as well? 

Isaiah tells us that, " He was wounded for our transgres- 
sions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of 
our peace was upon Him : and with His stripes we are healed. " 
In Bonians iv. 25, we read : He "was delivered for our offences, 
and was raised again for our justification." Let us believe, 
and get the benefit of His finished work. 

Then again in John x. 9 : "I am the door : by Me if any 
man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and 
find pasture." That is the promise. Then the 27th verse, 
"My sheep hear my voice; and I know them, and they follow 
Me. And I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never 
perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 
My father which gave them is greater than all; and no man 
is able to pluck tbem out of my Father's hand." Think of 



96 THE WAY TO OOD. 



that! The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are pledged 
to keep us. You see that it is not only the Father, not only 
the Son, hut the three persons of the Triune God. 

Now, a great many people want some token outside of 
God's word. That habit always brings doubt. If I made a 
promise to meet a man at a certain hour and place to-morrow, 
and he were to ask me for my watch as a token of my sincer- 
ity, it would be a slur on my truthfulness. We must not 
question what God has said : He has made statement after 
statement, and multiplied figure upon figure. Christ says : 
"Tarn the door; by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved." 
"I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known 
of Mine." "I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
"I am the truth;" receive Me, and you will have the trutlu 
for I am the embodiment of truth. Do you want to know the 
way? "I am the way:" follow Me, and I will lead you into- 
the kingdom. Are you hungering after righteousnes ? ' ' I am 
the Bread of life ; " if you eat of Me you shall never hunger. 
"I am the Water of life :" if you drink of this water it shall 
be within you "a well of water springing up unto everlasting 
life." "I am the resurrection and the life : he that believe th 
in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever 
liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." (John xi. 25, 26.) 

Let me remind you where our doubts come from. A good 
many of God's dear people never get beyond knowing them- 
selves servants. He calls us "friends." If you go into a 
house you will soon see the difference between the servant and 
the son. The son walks at perfect liberty all over the house ; 
he is at home. . But the servant takes a subordinate place. 
What we want is to get beyond servants. We ought to realize 
our standing with God as sons and daughters. He will not 
"un-child" His children. God has not only adopted' us, bufr 



ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 91 

are are His by birth : we have been born into His kingdom. 
My little boy was as much mine when he was a day old ao 
now that he is fourteen. He was my son ; although it did .not 
appear what he would be when he attained manhood. He is 
mine ; although he may have to undergo probation under 
tutors and governors. The children of God are not perfect; 
but we are perfectly His children. 

Another origin of doubts is looking at ourselves. H you 
want to be wretched and miserable, filled with doubts from 
morning till night, look at yourselves. "Thou wilt keep him 
in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." (Isa. xxvi. 
8.) Many of God's dear children are robbed of joy because 
they keep looking at themselves. 

Some one has said : " There are three ways to look. If 
you want to be wretched, look within ; if you wish to be dis- 
tracted, look around; but if you would have peace, look up." 
Peter looked away from Christ, and he immediately began to 
sink. The Master said to him: "0 thou of little faith! 
Where*—* didst thou doubt?" (Matt. xiv. 31.) He had God's 
eternal word, which was sure footing, and better than either 
marble, granite or iron; but the moment he took his eyes off 
Christ down he W6nt. Those who look around cannot see how 
unstable and dishonoring is their walk. We want to look 
straight at the " Author and Finisher of our faith." 

When I was a boy I could only make a straight track in 
the snow, by keeping my eyes fixed upon a tree or some object 
before me. The moment I took my eye off the mark set in 
front of me, I walked crooked. It is only when we look fix- 
edly on Christ that we find perfect peace. After He rose from 
the dead He showed His disciples His hands and His feet. 
(Luke xxiv. 40.) That was the ground of their peace. If 
you want to scatter your doubts, look at the blood; and if you 
want to increase your doubts, look at yourself. You will get 



98 THE WAY TO GOD. 



doubts enough for years by being occupied with yourself for a 
few days. 

Then again: look at what He is, and at what He has done; 
not at what you are, and what you have done. That is the 
way to get peace and rest. 

Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring the 
emancipation of three millions of slaves. On a certain day 
their chains were to fall off, and they were to be free. The 
proclamation was put up on the trees and fences wherever the 
Northern Army marched. A good many slaves could not 
read: but others read the proclamation, and most of them be- 
lieved it; and on a certain day a glad shout went up, "We are 
free!" Some did not believe it, and stayed with their old 
masters ; but it did not alter the fact that they were free. 
Christ, the Captain of our salvation, has proclaimed freedom 
to all who have faith in Him. Let us take Him at His word. 
Their feelings would not have made the slaves free. The 
power must come from the outside. Looking at ourselves will 
not make us free, but it is looking to Christ with the eye of 
faith. 

Bishop Kyle has strikingly said: "Faith is the root, and 
Assurance the flower. Doubtless you can never have the 
flower without the root; but it is no less certain you may have 
the root, and not the flower. 

"Faith is that poor trembling woman who came behind 
Jesus in the press, and touched the hem of His garment. 
(Mark v. 27.) Assurance is Stephen standing calmly in the 
midst of his murderers, and saying, ' I see the heavens opened, 
and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God ' 
(Acts vii. 56). 

"Faith is the penitent thief, crying, 'Lord, remember me' 
(Luke xxiii. 42). Assurance is Job sitting in the dust, covered 
with sores, and saying, 'I know that my Eedeemer livethr 



ASSURANCE OF SALVATION. 99 

4 Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him ' (Job xix. 25; 
xiii. 15). 

"Faith is Peter's drowning cry, as he began to sink, 
'Lord, sa-ve me! ' (Matt. xxiv. 30). Assurance is that same 
Peter declaring before the Council, in after-times, ' This is the 
stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become 
the head of the corner: neither is there salvation in any other; 
for there is none other name under heaven given among men 
whereby we must be saved ' (Acts iv. 11, 12). 

"Faith is the anxious, trembling voice, 'Lord, I believe; 
help Thou mine unbelief ! ' ('Mark ix. 24). Assurance is the 
confident challenge, ' Who shall lay anything to the charge of 
God's elect? Who is he that condemneth? ' (Kom. 
viii. 88, 34). 

Faith is Saul praying in the house of Judas at Damas- 
cus, sorrowful, blind, and alone. (Acts ix. 11.) Assurance 
is Paul, the aged prisoner, looking camly into the grave, 
and saying, • I know whom I have believed.' ' There is a 
crown laid up for me ' (2 Tim. i. 12; iv. 8). 

"Faith is Life. How great the blessing! Who can tell 
the gulf between life and death? And yet life may be weak, 
sickly, unhealthy, painful, trying, anxious, worn, burdensome, 
joyless, smileless, to the very end. 

"Assurance is mure than life. It is health, strength, power, 
vigor, activity, energy, manliness, beauty." 

A minister once pronounced the benediction in this way : 
"The heart of God to make us welcome; the blood of Christ to 
make us clean, and the Holy Spirit to make us certain." 
The security of the believer is the result of the operation of the 
Spirit of God. 

Another writer says : "I have seen shrubs and trees grow 
out of the rocks, and overhang fearful precipices, roaring cat- 
aracts, and deep running waters; but they maintained thei* 



J.00 THE WAY TO GOD. 

position, and threw out their foliage and branches as much as 
if they had been in the midst of a dense forest." It was their 
hold on the rock that made them secure; and the influences 
of nature that sustained their life. So believers are oftentimes 
exposed to the most horrible dangers in their journey to heaven ; 
but, so long as they are "rooted and grounded" in the Rock 
of Ages, they are perfectly secure. Their hold of Him is their 
guarantee ; and the blessings of His grace give them life and 
sustain them in life. And as the tree must die, or the rock 
fall, before a dissolution can be effected between them, so 
either the believer must lose his spiritual life, or the Rock must 
crumble, ere their union can be dissolved. 

Speaking of the Lord Jesus, Isaiah say's : "I will fasten 
Him as a nail in a sure place; and He shall be for a glorious 
throne to His Father's house : and they shall hang upon Him 
all the glory of His father's bouse, the offspring and the issue, 
all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to 
all the vessels of flagons " (xxii. 23, 24). 

There is one nail, fastened in a sure place ; and on it hang 
all the flagons and all the cups. "Oh," says one little cup, "I 
am so small and so black, suppose I were to drop!" "Oh,'' 
says a flagon, "there is no fear of you; but I am so heavy, so 
very weighty, suppose I were to drop!" And a little cup says, 
"Oh, if I were only like the gold cup there, I should never fear 
falling." But the gold cup answers, "It is not because I am 
a gold cup that I keep up; but because I hang upon the nail." 
If the nail gives way we all come down, gold cups, china cups, 
pewter cups, and all; but as long as the nail keeps up, all that 
hang on Him hang safely. 

I once read these words on a tombstone: "Born, died, 
kept." Let us pray God to keep us in perfect peace, and 
assured of salvation. 



CHRIST ALL AND IN ALL. *01 

CHAPTER VIII. 
CHRIST ALL AND IN ALL. 

(OOZiOBBIANS iii. 11.) 

Ohkist is all to us that we make Him to be. I want to 
emphasize that word "all." Some men make Him to be "a 
foot out of a dry ground," "without form or comeliness." He 
is nothing to them; they do not want Him. Some Chris- 
tians have a very small Saviour, for they are not willing to 
receive Him fully, and let Him do great and mighty things 
for them. Others have a mighty Saviour, because they make 
Him to be great and mighty. 

If we would know what Christ wants to be to us, we must 
first of all know Him as our Saviour from sin. When the 
angel came down from heaven to proclaim that He was to be 
born into the world, you remember he gave His name, "He 
shall be called Jesus,* for He shall save His people from their 
•ins." Have we been delivered from sin? He did not come 
to save us in our sins, but from our sins. Now, there are 
three ways of knowing a man. Some men you know only by 
hearsay; others you merely know by having been once intro- 
duced to them, you know them very slightly; other again you 
know by having been acquainted with them for years, you 
know them intimately. So I believe there are three classes of 
people to-day in the Christian Church and out of it: those 
who know Christ only by reading or by hearsay, those who 
have a historical Christ; those who have a slight personal ac- 
quaintance with Him; and, those who thirst, as Paul did, to 



102 THE WAY TO GOD. 

"know Him and the power of His resurrection." The more 
we know of Christ the more we shall love Him, and the hetter 
we shall serve Him. 

Let us look at Him as He hangs upon the Cross, and 
see how He has put away sin. He was manifested that He 
might take away our sins ; and if we really know Him we 
must first of all see Him as our Saviour from sin. You 
remember how the angels said to the shepherds on the plains 
of Bethlehem, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, 
which shall be to all people : for unto you is born this day, in 
the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." 
(Luke ii. 10, 11.) Then if you go clear back to Isaiah, seven 
hundred years before Christ's birth, you will' find these words: 
"I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no Saviour" 
(xliii. 11). 

Again, in the First Epistle of John (iv. 14) we read : "We. 
have seen, and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be 
the Saviour of the world." All the heathen religions, we read, 
teach men to work their way up to God; but the religion of 
Jesus Christ is God coming down to men to save them, to lift 
them up out of the pit of sin. In Luke xix. 10, we read that 
Christ Himself told the people what He had come for: "The 
Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." 
So we start from the Cross, not from the cradle. Christ has 
opened up a new and living way to the Father; He has taken 
all the stumbling-blocks out of the way, so that every man 
who accepts of Christ as his Saviour can have salvation. 

But Christ is not only a Saviour. I might save a man 
from drowning and rescue him from an untimely grave ; but I 
might probably not be able to do any more for him. Christ is 
something more than a Saviour. When the children of Israel 
were placed behind the Mood, that blood was their salvation; 
but they would still have heard the crack of the slave-driver's 






CHRIST ALL IN ALL. 103 

whip if they had not been delivered from the Egyptian yoke of 
bondage: then it was that God delivered them from the hand 
of the king of Egypt. I have little sympathy with the idea 
that God comes down to save us, and then leaves us in prison, 
the slaves of our besetting sins. No; He has come to deliver 
us, and to give us victory over our evil tempers, our passions, 
and our lusts. Are you a professed Christian but one who is 
a slave to some besetting sin ? If you want to get victory over 
that temper or that lust, go on to know Christ more intimately. 
He brings deliverance for the past, the present, and the 
future. "Who delivered; who doth deliver; who will yet 
deliver." (2 Cor. i. 10.) 

• How often, like the children of Israel when they came to 
the Red Sea, have we become discouraged because everything 
looked dark before us, behind us, and around us, and we 
knew not which way to turn. Like Peter we have said, "To 
whom shall we go?" But God has apjieared for our deliver- 
ance. He has brought us through the Red Sea right out into 
the wilderness, and opened up the way into the Promised 
Land. But Christ is not only our Deliverer; He is our 
Redeemer. That is something more than being our Saviour. 
He has brought us back. "Ye have sold yourselves for 
nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money." (Isaiah 
lii. 3.) We were not redeemed with corruptible things, as 
silver and gold." (1 Peter i. 18.) If gold could have re- 
deemed us, could He not have created ten thousand worlds full 
of gold? 

When God had redeemed the children of Israel from the 
bondage of Egypt, and brought them through the Red Sea, 
they struck out for the wilderness ; and then God became to 
them their Way. I am so thankful the Lord has not left us 
in darkness as to the right way. There is no living man who 
has been groping in the darkness but may know the way. "I 



104 THE WAY TO GOD. 

am the Way," says Christ. If we follow Christ we shall be in 
the right way, and have the right doctrine. Who could lead 
the children of Israel through the wilderness like the Almighty 
God Himself? He knew the pitfalls and dangers of the way, 
and guided the people through all their wilderness journey 
right into the promised land. It is true that if it had not been 
for their accursed unbelief they might have crossed into the 
land at Kadesh Barnea, and taken possession of it, but they 
desired something besides God's word; so they were turned 
back, and. had to wander in the desert for forty years. I 
believe there are thousands of God's children wandering in the 
wilderness still. The Lord has delivered them from the hand 
of the Egyptian, and would at once take them through the 
wilderness right into the Promised Land, if they were only 
willing to follow Christ. Christ has been down here, and has 
made the rough places smooth, and the dark places light, and 
the crooked places straight. If we will only be led by Him, 
and will follow Him, all will be peace, and joy, and rest. 

In the frontier, when a man goes out hunting he takes a 
hatchet with him, and cuts off pieces from the bark of th« 
trees as he goes along through the forest : this is called 
"blazing the way." He does it that he may know the way 
back, as there is no pathway through these thick forests. 
Christ has come down to this earth; He has "blazed the 
Way :" and now that He has gone up on high, if we will but 
follow him, we shall be kept in the right path. I will tell you 
how you may know if you are following Christ or hot. If 
some one has slandered you, or misjudged you, do you treat 
them as your master would have done? If you do not bear 
these things in a loving and forgiving spirit, all the churches 
and ministers in the world cannot make you right. "If any 
man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none, of ,His." 
(Bomans viii. 9.) "If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new 



CHRIST ALL IN ALL. 1(K 

oreature : old things are passed away ; behold, all things are 
become new." (2 Cor. v. 17.) 

Christ is not only our way : He is the Light upon the way. 
He says, "I am the Light of the world." (John viii. 12; ix. 5; 
xii. 46.) He goes on to say, "He that followeth Me shall not 
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." It is im- 
possible for any man or woman who is following Christ to 
walk in darkness. If your soul is in the darkness, grop- 
ing around in the fog and mist of earth, let me tell you 
it is because you have got away from the true light. There is 
nothing but light that will dispel darkness. So let those who 
are walking in spiritual darkness admit Christ into their hearts : 
He is the Light. I call to mind a picture of which I used at 
one time to think a good deal ; but now I have come to look 
more closely, I would not put it up in my house except I 
turned the face to the wall. It represents Christ as standing 
at a door, knocking, and having a big lantern in His hand. 
Why, you might as well hang up a lantern to the sun as put 
one into Christ's hand. He is the Sun of Eighteousness ; and 
it is our privilege to walk in the light of an unclouded sun. 

Many people are hunting after light, and peace, and joy. 
We are nowhere told to seek after these things. If we admit 
Christ into our hearts these will all come of themselves. I 
remember, when a boy, I used to try in vain to catch my 
shadow. ■ One day I was walking with my face to the sun ; 
and as I happened to look around I saw that my shadow was 
following me. The faster I went the faster my shadow fol- 
lowed ; I could not get away from it. So when our faces are 
directed to the Sun of Eighteousness, the peace and joy are 
sure to come. A man said to me some time ago, "Moody, 
how do you feel?" It was so long since I had thought about 
my feelings I had to stop and consider awhile, in order to find 
out. Some Christians are all the time thinking about their 



106 THE WAY TO GOD. 



feelings ; and because they do not feel just right they think 
their joy is all gone. If we keep our faces towards Christ, and 
are occupied with Him, we shall be lifted out of the darkness 
and the trouble that may have gathered round our path. 

I remember being in a meeting after the war of the great 
rebellion broke out. The war had been going on for about six 
months. The army of the North had been defeated at Bull 
Run, in fact, we had nothing but defeat, and it looked as 
though the republic was going to pieces. So we were much 
cast down and discouraged. At this meeting every speaker 
for awhile seemed as if he had hung his harp upon the willow; 
and it was one of the gloomiest meetings I ever attended. 
Finally an old man with beautiful white hair got up to speak, 
and his face literally shone. "Young men," he said "you do 
not talk like sons of the King. Though it is dark just here, 
remember it is light somewhere else." Then he went on to 
say that if it were dark all over the world, it was light up 
around the Throne. 

He told us he had come from the east, where a friend had 
described to him how he had been up a mountain to spend 
the night and see the sun rise. As the party were climbing up 
the mountain, and before they had reached the summit, a 
storm came on. This friend said to the guide, "I will give 
this up; take me back." The guide smiled, and replied, "I 
think we shall get above the storm soon." On they went; and 
it was not long before they got up to where it was as calm as 
any summer evening. Dewn in the valley a terrible storm 
raged; they could hear the thunder rolling, and see the 
lightning's flash; but all was serene on the mountain top. 
"And so, my young friends," continued the old man, "though 
all is dark around you, come a little higher and the darkness 
will flee away." Often when I have been inclined to get dis- 
couraged, I have thought of what he said. Now if you are 



CHRIST ALL IN ALL. 107 

down in the valley amidst the thick fog and the darkness, get 
a little higher; get nearer to Christ, and know more of Him. 
You remember the Bible says, that when Christ expired on 
the cross, the light of the world was put out. God sent His 
Son to be the light of the world ; but men did not love the 
light because it reproved them of their sins. When they were 
about to put out this light, what did Christ say to His disciples? 
"Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." (Acts i. 8.) He has gone 
up yonder to intercede for us ; but He wants us to shine for 
Him down here. "Ye are the light of the world." (Matt. v. 
14.) So our work is to shine; not to blow our own trumpet 
so that people may look at us. What we want to do is to show 
forth Christ. If we have any light at all it is borrowed light. 
Some one said to a young Christian: "Converted! it is all 
moonshine 1" Said he: "I thank you for the illustration; 
the moon borrows its light from the sun ; and we borrow ours 
from the Sun of Kighteousness." If we are Christ's, we are 
here to shine for Him: by and by he will call us home to our 
reward. 

I remember hearing of a blind man who sat by the way- 
side with a lantern near him. When he was asked what he 
had a lantern for, as he could not see the light, he said it was 
that people should not stumble over him. I believe more 
people stumble over the inconsistencies of professed Chris- 
tians than from any other cause. Waar is doing more harm 
to the cause of Christ than all the ■ scepticism in the world is 
this cold, dead formalism, this conformity to the world, this 
professing what we do not possess. The eyes of the world are 
upon us. I think it was George Fox who said every Quaker 
ought to light up the country for ten miles around him. If 
we were all brightly shining for the Master, those about us 
would soon be reached, and there would be a shout of praise 
going to heaven. 



108 THE WAY TO GOD. 

People say : " I want to know what is the truth." Listen: 
'•I am the truth," says Christ. (John xiv. 5.) If you want 
to know what the truth is, get acquainted with Christ. Peo- 
ple also complain that they have not life. Many are trying 
to give themselves spiritual life. You may galvanize your- 
selves and put electricity into yourselves, so to speak; but the 
effect will not last very long. Christ alone is the author of 
life. If you would have real spiritual life, get to know Christ. 
Many try to stir up spiritual life by going to meetings. That 
may be well enough ; but it will be of no use, unless they get 
into contact with the living Christ. Then their spiritual life 
will not be a spasmodic thing, but will be perpetual ; flowing 
on and on, and bringing forth fruit to God. 

Then Christ is our Keeper. A great many young disci- 
ples are afraid they will not hold out. "He that keepeth 
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." (Psalm cxxi. 4.) It 
is the work of Christ to keep us ; and if He keeps us there 
will be no danger of our falling. I suppose if Queen Victoria 
had to take care of the Crown of England, some thief might 
attempt to get access to it ; but it is put away in the Tower of 
London, and guarded night and day by soldiers. The whole 
English army would, if necessary, be called out to protect it. 
And we have no strength in ourselves. We are no match for 
Satan; he has had six thousand years' experience. But then 
we remember that the One who neither slumbers nor sleeps is 
our keeper. In Isaiah xli. 10, we read, " Fear thou not, for I 
am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will 
strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold thee 
with the right hand of My righteousness." In Jude also, 
verse 24, we are told that He is " able to keep us from fall- 
ing." "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
the righteous. " (1 John ii. 1.) 



CHRIST ALL IN ALL. 109 

But Christ is something more. He is our Shephebd. It 
is the work of the shepherd to care for the sheep, to feed them 
and protect them. "I am the Good Shepherd;" " My sheep 
hear My voice." "I lay down My life for the sheep." In 
that wonderful tenth chapter of John, Christ uses the personal 
pronoun no less than twenty-eight times, in declaring what 
He is and what He will do. In verse 28 He says, " They 
shall never perish; neither shall any [man] pluck them out of 
My hand." But notice the word " man " is in italics. See 
how the verse really reads: "Neither shall any pluck them 
out of My hand " — no devil or man shall be able to do it. In 
another place the Scripture declares, "Your life is hid with 
Christ in God." (Col. iii. 3.) How safe and how secure! 

Christ says, " My sheep hear My voice . . . and they fol- 
low Me." (John x. 27.) A gentleman in the East heard of 
a shepherd who could call all his sheep to him by name. He 
went and asked if this was true. The shepherd took him to 
the pasture where they were, and called one of them by some 
name. One sheep looked up and answered the call, while the 
others went on feeding and paid no attention. In the same 
way he called about a dozen of the sheep around him. The 
stranger said, " How do you know one from the other? They 
all look perfectly alike." "Well," said he, "you see that 
sheep toes in a little; that other one has a squint; one has a 
little piece of wool off; another has a black spot; and another 
has a piece out of its ear." The man knew all his sheep by 
their failings, for he had not a perfect one in the whole flock. 
I suppose our Shepherd knows us in the same way. 

An Eastern shepherd was once telling a gentleman that 
his sheep knew his voice, and that no stranger could deceive 
them. The gentleman thought he would like to put the state- 
ment to the test. So he put on the shepherd's frock and tur- 
ban, and took his staff and went to the flock. He disguised 



ilO THE WAY TO GOD. 

his voice, and tried to speak as much like the shepherd as h« 
could; but he could not get a single sheep in the flock to fol- 
low him. He asked the shepherd if his sheep never followed 
a stranger. He was obliged to admit that if a sheep got sickly 
it would follow any one. So it is with a good many professed 
Christians; when they get sickly and weak in the faith, they 
will follow any teacher that comes along; but when the soul 
is in health, a man will not be carried away by errors and 
heresies. He will know whether the "voice" speaks the 
truth or not. He can soon tell that, if he is really in com- 
munion with God. When God sends a true messenger his 
words will find a ready response in the Christian heart. 

Christ is a tender Shepherd. You may some time think 
He has not been a very tender Shepherd to you; you are pass- 
ing under the rod. It it written, " Whom the Lord loveth He 
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." 
(Heb. xii. 6.) That you are passing under the rod is no proof 
that Christ does not love you. A friend of mine lost all his 
children. No man could ever have loved his family more; 
but the scarlet fever took one by one away; and so the whole 
four or five, one after another, died. The poor stricken parents 
went over to great Britain, and wandered from one place to 
another, there and on the continent. At length they found 
their way to Syria. One day they saw an Eastern shepherd 
come down to a stream, and call his flock to cross. The sheep 
came down to the brink, and looked at the water; but they 
seemed to shrink from it, and he could not get them to -respond 
to his call. He then took a little lamb, put it under one arm ; 
he took another lamb and put it under the other arm, and 
thus passed into the stream. The old sheep no longer stood 
looking at the water: they plunged in after the shepherd; and 
in u few minutes the whole flock was on the other side; and 
h' *sd them away to newer and fresher pastures. The be* 



CHRIST ALL IN ALL. Ill 

reaved father and mother, as they looked on the scene, felt 
that it taught them a lesson. They no longer murmured 
because the Great Shepherd had taken their lambs one by one 
into yonder world ; and they began to look up and look for- 
ward to the time when they would fellow the loved ones they 
had lost. If you have loved ones gone before, remember that 
your Shepherd is calling you to " set your affection on things 
above." (Col. iii. 2.) Let us be faithful to Him, and follow 
Him, while we remain in this world. And if you have not 
taken Him for your Shepherd, do so this very day. 

Christ is not only all these things that I have mentioned : 
He is also our Mediator, our Sanctifier, our Justifier; in fact, 
it would take volumes to tell what He desires to be to every 
individual soul. While looking through some papers I once 
read this wonderful description of Christ. I do not know 
where it originally came from ; but it was so fresh to my soul 
that I should like to give it to you : — 

" Christ is our Way; we walk in Him. He is our Truth; 
we embrace Him. He is our Life; we live in Him. He is 
our Lord; we choose Him to rule over us. He is our Master; 
we serve Him. He is our Teacher, instructing us in the way 
of salvation. He is our Prophet, pointing out the future. He 
is our Priest, having atoned for us. He is our Advocate, ever 
living to make intercession for us. He is our Saviour, saving 
to the uttermost. He is our Root; we grow from Him. . He 
is our Bread ; we feed upon Him. He is our Shepherd, lead- 
ing us into green pastures. He is our true Vine ; we abide in 
Him. He is the Water of Life ; we slake our thirst from Him. 
He is the fairest among ten thousand : we admire Him above 
all others. He is ' the brightness of the Father's glory, and 
the express image of His person;' we strive to reflect His like- 
ness. He is the upholder of all things ; we rest upon Him. 
He is our wisdom ; we are guided by Him. He is o£x Btf*^- 



112 THE WAY TO GOD. 



eousness; we cast all our imperfections upon Him. He is 
our Sanctification ; we draw all our power for holy life from 
Him. He is our Kedemption, redeeming us from all iniquity. 
He is our Healer, curing all our diseases. He is our Friend, 
relieving us in all our necessities. He is our Brother, cheer- 
ing us in our difficulties." 

Here is another beautiful extract : it is from Gotthold : 
" For my part, my soul is like a hungry and thirsty child; 
and I need His love and consolation for my refreshment. I 
am a wandering and lost sheep ; and I need Him as a good 
and faithful shepherd. My soul is like a frightened dove 
pursued by the hawk; and I need His wounds for a 
refuge. I am a feeble vine; and I need His cross to 
lay hold of, and to wind myself about. I am a sinner; 
and I need His righteousness. I am naked and bare ; 
and I need His holiness and innocence for a covering. I am 
ignorant; and I need His teaching: simple and foolish; and 
I need the guidance of His Holy Spirit. In no situation, and 
at no time, can I do without Him. Do I pray? He must 
prompt, and intercede for me. Am I arraigned by Satan at 
the Divine tribunal? He must be my Advocate. Am I in 
affliction? He must be my Helper. Am I persecuted by the 
*yorld? He must defend me, When I am forsaken, He must 
be my Support ; when I am dying, my life : when mouldering 
in the grave, my Eesurrection. Well, then, I will rather part 
with all the world, and all that it contains, than with Thee, 
my Saviour. And, God be thanked! I know that Thou, too, 
art neither able nor willing to do without me. Thou art rich ; 
and I am poor. Thou hast abundance; and I am needy. 
Thou hast righteousness; and I sins. Thou hast wine and 
oil; and I wounds. Thou hast cordials and refreshments; 
and I hunger and thirst. 



CHRIST ALL IN ALL. 113 

Use me then, my Saviour, for whatever purpose, and in 
whatever way, Thou mayest require. Here is my poor heart, 
an empty vessel; fill it with Thy grace. Here is my 6inful 
and troubled soul; quicken and refresh it with Thy love. 
Take my heart for Thine aoode; my mouth to spread the glory 
of Thy name ; my love and all my powers, for the advance- 
ment of Thy believing people ; and never suffer the steadfast- 
ness and confidence of my faith to abate — that so at all times 
i may oe enabled from tUe heart to sav. • Jesus neeas me, ana 
I Him? and eo we suit each other.* " 



lx* THE WAY TO GOD. 



CHAPTER IX. 
BACKSLIDING. 

" » wfll heal tfieir backsliding ; I will love them freely : for Mine anger la 
airay. • — ±toBBA xiv. 4. 

There are two kinds of backsliders. Borne have never 
been converted: they have gone through the form of joining a 
Christian community and claim to be backsliders; but they 
never have, if I may use the expression, "slid forward." 
They may talk of back-sliding; but they have never really 
been born again. They need to be treated differently from real 
back-sliders — those who have been born of the incorruptible 
seed, but who have turned aside. We want to bring the latter 
back the same road by which they left their first love. 

Turn to Psalm lxxxv. 5. There you read : " Wilt Thou 
be angry with us for ever? wilt Thou draw out Thine anger 
to all generations? wilt Thou not revive us again : that Thy 
people may rejoice in Thee? Show us Thy mercy, Lord; 
and grant us Thy salvation." Now look again: " I will hear 
what God the Lord ivill speak : for He will speak peace unto His 
people, and to His saints; but let them not turn again to 
folly "(verse 8). 

There is nothing that will do back- sliders so much good as 
to come in contact with the Word of God ; and for them the 
Old Testament is as full of help as the New. The book of 
Jeremiah has some wonderful passages for wanderers. What 
we want to do is to get back-sliders to hear what God the Lord 
will say. 



BACKSLIDING. 115 



Look for a moment at Jeremiah vi. 10. " To whom shall 
I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their 
ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken : behold, the 
word of the Lord is unto them a reproach ; they have no de- 
light in it." That is the condition of back-sliders. They 
have no delight whatever in the word of God. But we want to 
bring them back, and let God get their ear. Bead from the 
14th verse : "They have healed also the hurt of the daughter 
of My people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no 
peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abom 
ination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could thej 
blush : therefore they shall fall among them that fall : at the 
time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. 
Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask 
for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein ; 
and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will 
not walk 'therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, 
Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will 
not hearken." 

That was the condition of the Jews when they had back- 
slidden. They had turned away from the old paths. And 
that is the condition of backsliders. They have got away 
from the good old book. Adam and Eve fell by not hearken- 
ing to the word of God. They did not -believe God's word; 
but they believed the tempter. That is the way backsliders 
fall — by turning away from the word of God. 

In Jeremiah ii. we find God pleading with them as a father 
would plead with a son. " Thus saith the Lord, What ini- 
quity have your fathers found in Me, that they are gone 
from Me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? 
. . . Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord; and 
with your children's children will I plead . . . For my people 
hav© committed two evils : they have forsaken Me, the Foun- 



116 THE WAY TO GOD. 



tain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken 

cisterns, that can hold no water." 

Now there is one thing to which we wish to call the atten- 
tion of backsliders; and that is, that the Lord never forsook 
them; but that they forsook Him! The Lord never left them; 
but they left Him! And this, too, without any cause! He 
says, "What iniquity have your fathers found in Me, that 
they are gone far from Me?" Is not God the same to-day as 
when you came to Him first? Has God changed? Men are 
apt to think that God has changed; but the fault is with 
them. Backslider, I would ask you, "What iniquity is there 
in God, that you have left Him and gone far from Him?" 
You have, He says, hewed out to yourselves broken cisterns 
that hold no water. The world cannot satisfy the new na- 
ture. No earthly well can satisfy the soul that has become a 
partaker of the heavenly nature. Honor, wealth and the 
pleasures of this world will not satisfy those who, having 
tasted the water of life, have gone astray, seeking refresh- 
ment at the worlds fountains. Earthly wells will get dry. 
They cannot quench spiritual thirst. 

Again in the 32d verse: "Can a maid forget her orna- 
ments, or a bride her attire? yet My people have forgotten 
Me, days without number.'* That is the charge which God 
brings against the backslider. They "have forgotten Me, 
days without number." 

I have often startled young ladies when I have said to 
them, "My friend, you think more of your ear-rings than of 
the Lord." The reply has been, "No, I do not." But when 
I have asked, "Would you not be troubled if you lost one; 
and would you not set about seeking for it ?" the answer has 
been, "Well, yes, I think I should." But though they had 
turned from the Lord, it did not give them any trouble; nor 
did they seek after Him that they might find Him. 



BACKSLIDING. 117 



How many once in fellowship and in daily communion 
with the Lord now think more of their dresses and ornaments 
than of their precious souls ! Love does not like to be for- 
gotten. Mothers would hare broken hearts if their children 
left them and never wrote a word or sent any memento of their 
affection ; and God pleads over backsliders as a parent over 
loved ones who have gone astray. He tries to woo them back. 
He asks: " What have I done that you should have forsaken 
Me?" 

The most tender and loving words to be found in the whole 
of the Bible are from Jehovah to those who have left Him 
without a cause. Jer. ii. 19. 

Hear how He argues with such: (Jer. ii. 19.) "Thine 
own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall 
reprove thee; know, therefore, and see, that it is an evil thing 
and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that 
My fear is not in thee, gaith the Lord God of hosts." 

I do not exaggerate when I say that I have seen hundreds 
of backsliders come back; and I have asked them if they have 
not found it an evil and a bitter thing to leave the Lord. You 
cannot find a real backslider, who has known the Lord, but 
will admit that it is an evil and a bitter thing to turn away 
from Him ; and I do not know of any on« verse more used to 
bring back wanderers than that very one. May it bring you 
back if you have wandered into the far country. 

Look at Lot. Did not he find it an evil and a bitter thing? 
He was twenty years in Sodom, and never made a convert. 
He got on well in the sight of the world. Men would have 
told you that he was one of the most influential and worthy 
men in all Sodom. But alas! alas! he ruined his family. 
And it is a pitiful sight to see that old backslider going through 
the streets of Sodom at midnight, after he has warned bia 
children, and they have turned a deaf ear. 



118 THE WAY TO GOD. 

I have never known a man and his wife backslide, without 
its proving utter ruin to their children. They will make a 
mockery of religion and will deride their parents : "Thine own 
wickedness shall correct thee; and thy backsliding shall re- 
prove thee!" Did not David find it so? Mark him, crying, 
"0 my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I 
had died for thee; Absalom, my son, my son!" I think it 
was the ruin, rather than the death of his son that caused this 
anguish. 

I remember being engaged in conversation some years ago, 
till past midnight, with an old man. He had been for years 
wandering on the barren mountains of sin. That night he 
wanted to get back. We prayed, and prayed, and prayed, till 
light broke in upon him ; and he went away rejoicing. The 
next night he sat in front of me when I was preaching, and I 
think that I never saw any one look so sad and wretched in all 
my life. Be followed me into the enquiry-room. "What is 
the trouble?" I asked. "Is your eye off the Saviour? Have 
your doubts come back?" "No; it is not that," he said. "I 
did not go to business, but spent all this day in visiting my 
children. They are all married and in this city. I went from 
house to house, but there was not one but mocked me. It is 
the darkest day of my life. I have awoke up to what I have 
done. I have taken my children into the world ; and now I 
cannot get them out." The Lord had restored unto him the 
joy of His salvation; yet there was the bitter consequence of 
his transgression. You can run through your experience; 
and you can find just such instances repeated again and again. 
Many who came to your city years ago serving God, in their 
prosperity have forgotten Him : and where are their song and 
daughters ? Show me the father and mother who have deserted 
the Lord and gone back to the beggarly elements of the world; 
and I am mistaken if their children are not on the high road 
to ruin. 



BACKSLIDING. 118 



As we desire to be faithful we warn these backsliders. It is 
a sign of love to warn of danger. We may be looked upon as 
enemies for a while ; but the truest friends are those who lift up 
the voice of warning. Israel had no truer friend than Moses. 
In Jeremiah God gave His people a weeping prophet to bring 
them back to Him; but they cast off God. They forgot the God 
who brought them out of Egypt, and who led them through 
the desert into the promised land. In their prosperity they 
forget Him and turned away. The Lord had told them what 
would happen. (Deut. xxviii.) And see what did happen. 
The king who make light of the word of God was taken captive 
by Nebuchadnezzar, and his children brought up in front of 
him and every one slain; his eyes were put out of his head; 
and he was bound in fetters of brass and cast into a dungeon 
in Babylon. (2 Kings xxv. 7.) That is the way he reaped 
what he had sown. Surely it is an evil and a bitter thing to 
backslide, but the Lord would win you back with the message 
of His Work. 

In Jeremiah viii. 5, we read ; "Why then is this people of 
Jerusalem slidden by a perpetual backsliding? They holdfast 
deceit; They refuse to return" That is what the Lord brings 
against them. "They refuse to return." "I hearkened and 
heard: but they spake not aright: no man repented him of 
his wickedness, saying, What have I done? Every one turned 
to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle. Yea, the 
stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times ; and the 
turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their 
coming; but My people know not the judgment of the Lord." 

Now look: "I hearkened and heard; but they spake not 
aright." No family altar! No reading the Bible! No closet 
devotion!^ God stoops to hear; but His people have turned 
away! If there be a penitent backslider, one who is anxio'as 
for pardon and restoration, you will find no words more tendeir 



120 THE WAT TO GOD. 



than are to be found in Jeremiah hi. 12: "Go, and proclaim 
these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backslid- 
ing Israel, saith the Lord; and I will not cause Mine anger to 
fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will 
not keep anger forever." Now notice: "Only acknowledge 
thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord 
thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the stranger under 
every green tree, and ye have not obeyed My voice, saith the 
Lord. Turn, backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I 
am married unto you" — think of God coming and saying, "I 
am married unto you! — and I will take you one of a city, and 
two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion." 

"Only acknowledge thine iniquity." How many times 
have I held that passage up to a backslider! "Acknowledge" 
it; and God says I will forgive you. I remember a man ask- 
ing, "Who said that? Is that there?" And I held up to him 
the passage, "Only acknowledge thine iniquity;" and the man 
went down on his knees, and cried, "My God, I have sinned" > 
and the Lord restored him there and then. If you have wan- 
dered, He wants you to come back. 

He says in another place, "0 Ephraim, what shall I do 
unto thee? Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your 
goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth 
away" (Hosea vi. 4). His compassion and His love is won- 
derful! 

In Jeremiah hi. 22; "Return, ye backsliding children, and 
I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto Thee; 
Thou art the Lord our God." He just puts words into the 
mouth of the backslider. Only come ; and, if you will come, 
He will receive you graciously and love you freely. 

In Hosea xiv. 1, 2, 4: "0 Israel, return unto the Lord thy 
God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take witn'you 
Words, and turn to the Lord (He puts words into your mouth) : 



BA CK SLIDING. 121 

say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us gra- 
ciously: so will we render the calves of our lips ... I 
will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for Mine 
anger is turned away from him." Just observe that, Turn! 
Turn ! ! Tukn! ! ! rings all through these passages. 

Now, if you have wandered, remember that you left Him t 
and not He you. You have to get out of the backslider's pit 
just in the same way you got in. And if you take the same 
road as when you left the Master you will find Him now, just 
where you are. 

If we were to treat Christ as any earthly friend we should 
never leave Him ; and there would never be a backslider. If I 
were in a town for a single week I should not think of going 
away without shaking hands with the friends I had made, and 
Baying "Good bye" to them. I should be justly blamed if I 
took the train and left without saying a word to any one. The 
cry would be, "What's the matter?" But did you ever hear of 
a backslider bidding the Lord Jesus Christ "Good bye "; going 
into his closet and saying "Lord Jesus, I have known Thee 
ten, twenty, or thirty years : but I am tired of Thy service; 
Thy yoke is not easy, nor Thy burden light ; so I am going 
back to the world, to the flesh-pots of Egypt. Good bye, Lord 
Jesus! Farewell" ? Did yea ever hear that? No; you 
never did, and you never will. I tell you, if you get into the. 
closet and shut out the world and hold communion with tbe 
Master you cannot leave Him. The language of your heart 
will be, "To whom shall we go," but unto Thee? "Thou hast 
the words of eternal life " (John vi. 68). You could not go 
back to the world if you treated Him in that way. But you 
left Him and ran away. You have forgotten Him days with- 
out number. Comeback to-day; just as you are ! Make up 
your mind that you will not rest until God has restored unto 
you the joy of His salvation- 



122 THE WAY TO GOD. 



A gentleman in Cornwall once met a Christian in the street 
whom he knew to be a backslider. He went up to him, and 
said : "Tell me, is there not some estrangement between you 
and the Lord Jesus?" The man hung his head, and said, 
"Yes." "Well," said the gentleman, "what has He done to 
you?" The answer to which was a flood of tears. 

In Eevelation ii. 4, 5, we read: "Nevertheless I have some- 
what against thee, because thou hast left the first lov«. Ee- 
member therefore from whence thou art fallen ; and repent, 
and do the first works : or else I will come unto thee quickly, 
and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou 
repent." I want to guard you against a mistake which some 
people make with regard to "doing the first works." Many 
think that they are to have the same experience over again. 
That has kept thousands for months without peace; because 
they have been waiting for a renewal of their first experience. 
You will never have the same experience as when you first 
came to the Lord. God never repeats himself. No two peopla 
of all earth's millions look alike or think alike. You may say 
that you cannot tell two people apart; but when you get well 
acquainted with them you can very quickly distinguish differ- 
ences. So, no one person will have the same experience a 
second time. If God will restoia His joy to your soul let Him 
do it in His way. Do not mark out a way for God to bless 
you. Do not expect the same experience that you had two or 
twenty years ago. You will have a fresh experience, and God 
will deal with you in His own way. If you confess your sins 
and tell Him that you have wandered from the path of His 
commandments He will restore unto you the joy of His 
salvation. 

I want to call your attention to the manner in which Peter 
fell; and I think that nearly all fall pretty much in the same 
way. I want to lift up a warning note to those who have not 



BACKSLIDING. 123 



fallen. "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he 
fall " (1 Cor. x. 12). Twenty-five years ago — and for the first 
five years after I was converted — I used to think that if I were 
able to stand for twenty years I need fear no fall. But the 
nearer you get to the Cross the fiercer the battle. Satan aims 
high. He went amongst the twelve; and singled out the 
Treasurer — Judas Iscariot, and the Chief Apostle — Peter. 
Most men who have fallen have done so on the strongest side 
of their character, i am told that the only side upon which 
Edinburgh Castle was successfully assailed was where the 
rocks were steepest, and where the garrison thought them- 
selves secure. If any man thinks that he is strong enough to 
resist the devil at any one point he needs special watch there, 
for the tempter comes that way. 

Abraham stands, as it were, at the head of the family of 
faith ; and the children of faith may be said to trace their 
descent to Abraham : and yet down in Egypt he denied his 
wife. (Gen. xii.) Moses was noted for his meekness; and 
yet he was kept out of the promised land because of one hasty 
act and speech, when he was told by the Lord to speak to the 
rock so that the congregation and their beasts should have 
water to drink. "Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you 
water out of this rock?" (Num. xx. 10). 

Elijah was remarkable for his boldness : and yet he went 
off a day's journey into the wilderness like a coward and hid 
himself under a juniper tree, requesting for himself that he 
might die, because of a message he received from a woman. 
(1 Kings xix.) Let us be careful. No matter who the man is 
— he may be in the pulpit — but if he gets self-conceited he will 
be sure to fall. "We who are followers of Christ need con- 
stantly to pray to be made humble, and kept humble. God 
made Moses' face so to shine that other men could 6ee it; but 
Moses himself wist not that his face 6hone, and the more holy 



124 THE WAY TO GOD. 

in heart a man is the more manifest to the outer world will be 
his daily life and conversation. Some people talk of how 
humble they are ; but if they have true humility there will be 
no necessity for them to publish it. It is not needful. A 
lighthouse does not have a drum beaten or a trumpet blown 
in crder to proclaim the proximity of a lighthouse : it is its 
own witness. And so if we have the true light in us it will 
show itself. It is not those who make the most noise who 
have the most piety. There is a brook, or a little "burn " as 
the Scotch call it, not far from where I live ; and after a heavy 
rain you can hear the rush of its waters a long way off: but 
let there come a few days of pleasant weather, and the brook 
becomes almost silent. But there is a river near my house, 
the flow of which I never heard in my life, as it pours on in 
its deep and majestic course the year round. We should have 
bo much of the love of God within us that its presence shall be 
evident without our loud proclamation of the fact. 

The first step in Peter's downfall was his self-confidence. 
The Lord warned him. The Lord said: "Simon, Simon, 
behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may 
sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that 
thy faith fail not " (Luke xxii. 31, 32). But Peter said : 
"I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison and to 
death." "Though all shall be. offended because of Thee, yet 
will I never be offended." (Matt. xxvi. 23.) " James and 
John, and the others, may leave You; but You can count on 
me!" But the Lord warned him: "I tell thee, Peter, the 
cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny 
that thou knowest Me." (Luke xxii. 24.) 

Though the Lord rebuked him, Peter said he was ready to 
follow Him to death. That boasting is too often a forerunner 
of downfall. Let us walk humbly and softly. We have a 
great tempter; and, in an unguarded hour, we may stumble 
and fall and bring a scandal on Christ. 



BACKSLIDING. 125 



The next step in Peter's downfall was that ke went to 
deep. If Satan can rock the Church to sleep he does his 
work through God's own people. Instead of Peter watching 
one short hour in Gethsemane, he fell asleep, and the Lord 
asked him, " "What, could ye not watch with Me one hour?" 
(Matt. xxvi. 40.) The next thing was that he fought in the 
energy of the flesh. The Lord rebuked him again and said, 
" They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." 
(Matt. xxvi. 62.) Jesus had to undo what Peter had done. 
The noxt thing, he "followed afar off." Step by step he 
gets away. It is a sad thing when a ^child of God follows afar 
off. "When you see him associating with worldly friends, and 
throwing his influence on the wrong side, he is following afar 
off; and it will not be long before disgrace will be brought 
upon the old family name, and Jesus Christ will be wounded 
in the house of his friends. The man, by his example, will 
cause others to stumble and fall. 

The next thing — Peter is familiar and friendly with the 
enemies of Christ. A damsel says to this bold Peter : "Thou 
also wast with this Jesus of Galilee." But he denied before 
them all, saying, "I know not what thou gayest." And when 
he was gone out into the porch another maid saw him and 
said unto them that were there, " This fellow was also with 
Jesus of Nazareth." And again he denied with an oath. "I 
do not know the Man." Another hour passed; and yet he did 
not realize his position ; when another confidently affirmed that 
that he was a Galilean, for his speech betrayed him. And he 
was angry and began to curse and to swear, and again denied 
his Master : and the cock crew. (Matt. xxvi. 69-74.) 

He commences away up on the pinacle of self-conceit, and 
goes down step by step until he breaks out into cursing, o>. d 
swears that he never knew his Lord. 



126 THE WAY TO GOD. 

The Master might have turned and said to him, " Is it 
true, Peter, that you have forgotten Me so soon ? Do you not 
remember when your wife's mother lay sick of a fever that 3 
rebuked the disease and it left her? Do you not call to mind 
your astonishment at the draught of fishes so that you ex- 
claimed, 'Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, Lord?' 
Do you remember when in answer to your cry, ' Lord, save 
me, or I perish,' I stretched out My hand and kept you from 
drowning in the water? Have you forgotten when, on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, with James and John, you said to 
Me, ' Lord, it is good to be here : let us make three taberna- 
cles?' Have you forgotten being with Me at the supper-table, 
and in Gethsemane? Is it true that you have forgotten Me so 
soon? The Lord might have upbraided him with questions 
such as these : but He did nothing of the kind. He cast one 
look on Peter : and there was so much love in it that it broke 
that bold disciple's heart : and he went out and wept bitterly. 

And after Christ rose from the dead see how tenderly He 
dealt with the erring disciple. The angel at. the sepulchre 
says, " Tell His disciples, and Peter.'" (Mark xvi. 7.) The 
Lord did not forget Peter, though Peter had denied Him thrice ; 
so He caused this kindly special message to be conveyed to the 
repentant disciple. What a tender and lovhog Saviour we 
have! 

Friend, if you are one of the wanderers, let the loving 
look of the Master win you back; and let Him restore you to 
the joy of His salvation. 

Before closing, let me say that I trust God will restore 
some backslider reading these pages, who may in the future 
become a useful member of society and a bright ornament of 
the Church. We should never have had the thirty-second 
Psalm if David had not been restored : "Blessed is he whose 
* \nsgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered"; or that 



BACKSLIDING. 



12? 



beautiful fifty-first Psalm which was written by the restored 
backslider. Nor should we have had that wonderful sermon 
on ihe day of Pentecost when three thousand were converted 
— preached by another restored backslider. 

May God restore other backsliders and make them a 
thousand times more used for His glory than they ever were 
before. 






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